Perhaps I misunderstood the meaning of the phrase “Offending the offensive is a laudable goal in itself.”
What do you understand “offending the offensive” to mean?
More to the point; Who is being forgiven and by whom? And why the rush to forgive when the victim’s bodies are barely interned?
I listened to NPR this morning and the BBC interviewer spoke to one of the CH editors (or writers?). She couldn’t explain the “Tout est pardonne” comment either. Something about the victims having a coffee with their killers (in some alternate universe, I guess) to discuss the reasons they did what they did. Made absolutely no sense. :dubious:
I take it to mean that policies such as those that include discrimination of others based on gender and religion are offensive and ought to be subject to ridicule.
How did you interpret “offending the offensive”?
Looking at the phrase again, I really have no idea. Snark withdrawn, though I don’t think it means what you said.
Sure! It’s not like Jesus, Abraham or any other religious figures/leaders are off the table.
Just for the sake of accuracy, Jon Stewart was addressing Tucker Carlson on CNN’s “Crossfire” show.
STEWART: It’s not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.
CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you’re accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You’ve got to be kidding me. He comes on and you…
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: You’re on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.
Thank you! Every time something like this happens, almost no one is willing to actually show the cartoons that’ve given such offense; it gets grating after a while.
And I second Arch Trout’s question: with there being no standard depiction of Mohammed, how do you know it’s him, and not just some dude in a turban?
I’m all for free speech, but I wouldn’t publish them. I have a lot of mixed feelings about all of this.
On the one hand I get freedom of the press. On the other hand, why publish something that’s going to be obviously offensive to a large group of people?
There’s probably nothing that gets published that I would be personally offended by, but I just don’t get the constant “poking of the bear” just because it’s there.
It makes little sense to me to go out of your way to offend a large group of people. I don’t think I’ve responded to any of the other threads on this topic. I have a hard time rationalizing the whole thing.
I checked the first two options.
I voted Yes, yes, yes. I’m sick of the norm being to kowtow to religious fairy-tales.
I would normally agree. I’m not one to mock things that other people take seriously. But if somebody thinks that a cartoon is worth killing over, I’m jolly well hitting the publish button. Flood the world and at least send a message that you can’t kill people over a cartoon, no matter how offensive it is.
I’m not sure if I’m being asked if I would publish the cartoon as the editor of Charlie Hebdo, or if I would publish them as the editor/news director of another outlet doing a story on Charlie Hebdo.
In the first case, I would publish the cartoon, because I’m not going to be cowed by violence. The magazine’s purpose is to be funny and provocative so I have good justifiable reasons to print it.
If I’m leading a news organization, however, I don’t print them. Not because I’m afraid of violence or that I’m afraid of offending Muslims specifically; but because my general policy is not to offend any group of people if it’s not necessary to the story I’m reporting. I can report on offensive images without displaying them, so that’s what I would do. If people want to see the images, they can go find them at Charlie Hebdo.
In other words, the purpose of the news is not to give a ‘fuck you’ to people who get easily offended. There’s no reason for a professional news organization to go out of its way to knowingly cause offense.
It’s different if the images were somehow integral to the reporting of the story, but as we’ve seen all over the media this week, they’re not. Hell most of the reporting I’ve heard has been on the radio, and descriptions of the cartoons have easily provided me with enough information to understand what is going on.
Yes, I would publish, and yes, I would do so because of the right to free speech.
However, and this is a big however, there is a line between free speech and being offensively anti-religious. I don’t think anything worthwhile is accomplished by crossing that line and would no sooner agree to publish something blatantly offensive to the Muslim faith than I would agree to publish something blatantly offensive to my own Christian faith.
I do not believe the cartoon under discussion here is offensively anti-religious, so publish away!
It’s irrelevant whether or not you find it offensive. By virtue of the fact that it’s an image of the prophet Mohammed makes it an offense to some not insignificant cross section of muslims.
So either you’re with the muslims or you’re with the infidels.
So if, say, a neo-Nazi pamphleteer or white-supremacist blogger were shot by an outraged black or Jewish vigilante, you would republish the racist materials? “Flood the world” with them?
Oops! :smack:
Thanks, never noticed that.
Yes, this. I don’t allow fundamentalism of any stripe to control my life. I didn’t escape from those ignorant Christian fundies to be afraid of Muslim fundies.
Sure, I’d do it, because yay free speech and boo organized religion.
But there limits to tastefulness, many of the same people that are happy to Mohammed parodied would get peeved by a bunch of cartoons disparaging Jesus. So I believe the very act of drawing Mohammed or Jesus or any fictional or real person should be legal and tolerated, but we don’t need to be overly disrespectful about it. Make your point and move on.
Fair question. For me it would be a question of, is there an ideology out there–a whole group of people–that thinks it is absolutely fair and just to kill someone over a cartoon/speech/whathaveyou. One person is a random nut. A few people, even, are random nuts. Radical Islam might not be a giant movement, but it’s definitely a movement with a record of thinking it’s a good idea to kill people over cartoons; they feel they’re doing God a favor. Nope. Here’s a cartoon meditating upon your question, though.
As it happens, free speech is a bit of a bee in my bonnet. I follow FIRE obsessively, push Rauch’s “Kindly Inquisitors” on everyone I can corner for 5 minutes, and run Banned Books Week at work. So, yeah, I’m a little absolutist about it. For me, free speech is a paramount political value…even though I’ve never said anything more offensive than “hell” out loud.
Actually, it IS relevant what I think about it as I am the publication’s editor and have the ability to make that kind of decision.