Doesn’t look like these cartoon wars are going to end anytime soon. Will this be a fair test of the West’s ability to with and accept mockery of serious subjects or is this apples and Zebras re any comparison to the cartoons about Mohammed?
it’s right on point. Bring it on.
No one has a right to enlist the power of the state to prevent others from offending through their speech.
The cure is exponentially worse than the disease.
(Iran, of course, is indirectly highlighting the absurdity of the German laws criminalizing “holocaust denial”, as if speaking an historical untruth can be a crime. I have no doubt (especially given Ahmedinajab’s (sp?) recent ravings on the topic, that among the cartoons will be many with that thrust.)
OK, but it should be an animated cartoon. With classic Disney characters! 
<super troopers>It’s Afghanistanimation</super troopers>
It’s a step up from burning embassies and sawing the heads off of innocents.
Sooooooooooo…do the losing cartoonists get their hands chopped off? Or maybe their heads can be sawed off.
The distinction here is that the mainstream Danes don’t feel any particular animus against the muslims, save when they’re trying to impose Sharia on everybody, or murdering “offensive” movie directors. The party line in Iran appears to be along the lines of: either the Holocaust is a myth, or the Holocaust was a good idea.
That’s what these people don’t get: “respect” for Islam in a secular society isn’t submission, and certainly isn’t public acceptance of islamic taboos. These people don’t respect non-Islamic religions in their countries, don’t tolerate religious freedom in their countries, yet are the first in line at even a hint of intolerance for Islam.
That is, one might argue that but a fringe of the Danish press, and Danes, are rabidly anti-Mulsim, but that the mainstream arab is at best mildly antipathetic towards the Jew.
And let me hazard a prediction that these Arab Street cartoonists will focus on the 6 or so million Jewish dead, and not on the 7 or so million others…
Even so, they’re learning: ideas in response to ideas. If we’re lucky, we can convert the whole thing to a Cartoon War, and Bush can have a War on Terroristic Cartoons, with a Department of Homeland Cartoons.
Important point:
Just because a paper chooses to exercise freedom to publish one item, doesn’t mean it is necessarily stifling freedom of expression if it declines to publish another.
The paper is under no editorial obligation to publish just any old bollocks that people foist upon it.
Although you’d have to admit that the published cartoons were certainly closer to just any old bollocks than they were to quality cartooning.
I agree, but the decision to publish something or not is an editorial one on the part of the newspaper, not evidence of some vast conspiracy to attack [insert name of ‘oppressed’ entity here]. If the papers print the holocaust cartoons, it proves nothing; if they decide not to print them, it proves nothing.
I don’t see why the Jewish people have to be dragged into it again.
I do see a difference between a Danish cartoonist - who ISN’T a muslim - drawing a cartoon in a Danish paper, about Mohammed who was a cruel warlord and who was probably having an epilectic fit and wrote a book with utter nonsense in it. [in the eyes of an unbeliever] – and the 6 million victims of another cruel idiot, who DID exist. Which can be proved, because we have all the evidence and even some survivors.
The subject matter isn’t quite equivalent, not that I’m bothered. Equivalence would be Abraham, Jesus or perhaps God himself being lampooned, all of which happen on a regular basis on eg. South Park, whereas this proposes lampooning a specific event (perhaps on a historically inaccurate basis). After this round of cartoons (which I don’t protest beyond not being interested), parity would be restored by another round in which Abraham, Jesus or God were lampooned together with some historically inaccurate cartoons of an event which the Islamic world is sensitive about like, I dunno, Mohammed getting buggered by an angel or something (“he pressed me hard”).
Speaking as someone who found (several of) the Danish Muhammad cartoons to be gratuitously offensive, insulting, anti-Muslim, and arguably sacrilegious, I think that lampooning the Holocaust in cartoons is also gratuitously offensive, insulting, and antisemitic.
However, I’d say that both are equally protected on free-speech grounds.
It’s true that free speech doesn’t require any media outlet to reprint Holocaust cartoons, any more than it was necessary to reprint the Muhammad cartoons. However, a paper that prints one but refuses to print the other will certainly be accused of being willing to offend Muslims but unwilling to offend Jews. And I really don’t see how they would counter that accusation, except with some rather sophistical-sounding argument about how the content isn’t quite equivalent.
Yes, you certainly do, don’t you?
However, a Muslim could just as easily respond that a cartoon that blasphemes about a religious figure is much worse than one that merely insults the suffering of ordinary human beings. Which sort of offense one considers “worse” kind of depends on the perspective of one’s offensensitivity.
Now this is very annoying.
Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons
There may have been totally different reasons and editorial reasons for this but in the light of recent events it would have been nice to be able to point to these cartoons to show a non-Muslim bias. Unfortunately now the accusations can start flowing.
Wow… so… let me get this straight… there are biased newspapers out there?
I’m shocked; SHOCKED! I tell you!
Tit for tat; what’s good for the Goose is gravy for the Gander.
Frankly this is the first hint of a sense of humor I have ever seen from these people. (I presume I am going to Hell for that.)
Do you really think there’s any humour involved? It just looks like a big sulk to me.
Hard to be sure. The Islamic sense of humor is very, very different from our own. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt.
So can we just reprint *Son O’ God * comics from the old *National Lampoon * in the New York Times and call it even?
Couldn’t we just send them a copy of Battle Pope Comics? Surely they’d be willing to call it even …
I have very little patience or sympathy for someone who attempts to exercise freedom of speach by trying to get a newspaper to print lies (I was going to say untruths, but frankly I think lies is a better term).
The opinion that the Holocaust didn’t happen isn’t an opinion at all, it’s just wrong.
The opinion that it happened and was a good thing is certainly an opinion, and if folks want to submit cartoons praising the Holocaust, I say print them. I’m sure the world would love to see what the best, most witty cartoonists have to say about the Holocaust (or lack thereof). There’s that saying about giving someone enough rope, but I don’t know at this point that there’s anything that would change the sycophantic relationship we have with the Mid-East.
(sorry if that got slightly off-topic, but I continue to remain disapointed that the US remains on such friendly terms with nations who continue to call for hatred towards Jews).
Our those who call for hatred towards Muslims for that matter.