Another Reason Why Mickey Kaus…
…is my favorite blogger on the left:
I want to know more about Andrew Sullivan’s readers’ warts, don’t you?
No, wait – that’s not the right quote – just a minute – ah, here it is:
I’m with Hugh Hewitt–Andrew Sullivan’s attempt to browbeat American publications into republishing those Mohammed cartoons seems close to unhinged. I thought the point was to defend the right of cartoonists to publish potentially offensive messages, not to embrace offense. “Yes, Western freedom really is all about dissing your Prophet!”–is that what we want to tell an Islamic world trying to decide whether to side with Western freedom? … P.S.: Buying Danish products, on the other hand, doesn’t embrace or repeat the offense but does support a friendly government unfairly attacked…
I like Kaus, but I think he missed the boat on this one. I don’t believe in insulting people just do insult people either, but these cartoons ARE the story, and a report that does not include the cartoons is going to be inherently uninformative. Our society is generally very open, and when controversy over art erupts (be it Piss Christ or The Holy Virgin Mary) the work of art (or “art”) is routinely displayed to place the controversy in context. Failure to include pictures of these cartoons on the part of newspapers or other media entities that had no problem reproducing far more graphic imagery will create the impression that THESE cartoons must be truely obscene, when they are to most western eyes no more provacatice than mild Reader’s Digest level satire.
Well, Sean, I’m just uncomfortable (and I suspect the same is true of Mickey) with this new meme floating around that we’re all somehow obligated to show these Muslim cartoons. That doesn’t imply sympathy with the morons who aren’t publishing these out of fear, or that I don’t appreciate the free-speech implications – but I’m not OBLIGATED to run the damn things, and I don’t think newspapers are, either…
I doubt that is your point (I grant you that the pictures add context), but earlier today we had Krauthammer accusing people who don’t publish the pictures of being collaborators (!!) with the extremists – a stance that is quite extreme, I might add…
One thing that strikes me about this debate is it’s almost as if it’s taking place 10 or 15 years ago, when the only way to see these cartoons would be through the newspapers or TV. But the Internet is everywhere these days, and with a minimum of fuss, it’s easy to find the pictures in question. It’s not as if they’re being supressed.
I think there’s a solid argument that at this point, the cartoons have gone beyond being a subject of consternation to a legitimate story; if you’ve got people dying because of these pictures, it’s worth taking a look at them. But I also don’t see the point of going out of your way to publish something that is offensive and which can be seen easily enough elsewhere. Perhaps it’s a wimpy compromise, but it seems to me that media outfits could publish links to sites that show the cartoons, thus providing their readers with a way at getting at the news in question without being offensive themselves in the process.
It’s a distinction that the most hardheaded Muslim extremists won’t appreciate, I’m sure, but no one’s going to reason with them.
“I also don’t see the point of going out of your way to publish something that is offensive and which can be seen easily enough elsewhere.”
Easily for you and me, perhaps, but most people don’t get their information through blogs or the internet in general. Most people still get their news through television and newspapers and those organs are doing their readers a tremendous disservice.
Of course, the MSM is now giving their dwindling viewers and readers yet another reason to get their news from the internet instead. I’ve noticed blog readership (as judged by comments in comment sections) seems to grow significantly in the immediate aftermath of stories that were initially un-or-under reported in the media. Justified or not, the media’s decision here is bad business (though it prevents anyone at the New York Times from becoming the next Theo Van Gough, at least in the short term, which I suspect is the real reason for their newfound respect for other people’s religious beliefs).