Home
A Falling Camel?
The Washington Post ombudsman's pathetic explanations of why her paper won't print the undoubtedly newsworthy Muhammad cartoons is hilariously convoluted, and a little bit pitiful. It's hard to sound principled when the truth is that you're just too scared to publish the 'toons.
And ombudsperson Deborah Howell's attempt to swagger falls flat:
"The Post has written thousands of stories about abortion, forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, and has printed countless recipes using pork, forbidden to Orthodox Jews and Muslims. And the Post publishes stories about drinking alcohol, forbidden by Islam and other faiths.
"That also doesn't mean that The Post doesn't occasionally offend readers' sensibilities, religious or otherwise. A recent story on over-the-top bar and bat mitzvahs in New York offended several Jewish readers. But you're not going to see a cartoon lampooning the Virgin Mary or the Jewish high holy days in The Post. So you wouldn't expect to see a cartoon making fun of Muhammad."
I never thought the mighty Washington Post would be reduced to this. (I am unable to tell if the Post carried a picture of the Virgin Mary made partly from elephant dung, a work of "art" shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999. The Virgin Mary piece was reproduced only last week in a New York Times piece on the cartoon riots which, interestingly, refrained from carrying the offending Danish cartoons. Anybody out there know?)
Ms. Howell makes a sad little attempt at bravado in her finale:
"Being a First Amendment freak, I support those newspapers' right to publish the cartoons. [Executive Editor Len] Downie made a different and equally valid decision not to publish."
Some "First Amendment freak." Note: Ms. Howell supports the newspaper's right to publish the cartoons--she doesn't seem to support actually publishing them. It would be so much better if newspapers would tell the truth--it's dangerous to publish these pictures. We're scared out of our gourds. The fake bravado is unbecoming. But so is cowardice.
The cartoon wars are just the beginning, as columnist Mark Steyn notes:
"From Europe's biggest-selling newspaper, the Sun: ''Furious Muslims have blasted adult shop [i.e., sex shop] Ann Summers for selling a blowup male doll called Mustafa Shag.'
"Not literally 'blasted' in the Danish Embassy sense, or at least not yet. Quite how Britain's Muslim Association found out about Mustafa Shag in order to be offended by him is not clear. It may be that there was some confusion: given that 'blowup males' are one of Islam's leading exports, perhaps some believers went along expecting to find Ahmed and Walid modeling the new line of Semtex belts. Instead, they were confronted by just another filthy infidel sex gag. The Muslim Association's complaint, needless to say, is that the sex toy 'insults the Prophet Muhammad--who also has the title al-Mustapha.'
"In a world in which Danish cartoons insult the Prophet and Disney Piglet mugs insult the Prophet and Burger King chocolate ice-cream swirl designs insult the Prophet, maybe it would just be easier to make a list of things that don't insult him. Nonetheless, the Muslim Association wrote to the Ann Summers sex-shop chain, 'We are asking you to have our Most Revered Prophet's name 'Mustafa' and the afflicted word 'shag' removed.'"
Whatever you think about adult shops (I find them abhorent but don't advocate additional laws against pornography--we should just shun known users), the West is all too willing to capitulate to non-Western values. Here's Steyn on the surrender of the West:
"The European Union's Justice and Security Commissioner, Franco Frattini, said on Thursday that the EU would set up a 'media code' to encourage 'prudence' in the way they cover, ah, certain sensitive subjects. As Signor Frattini explained it to the Daily Telegraph, 'The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression. . . . We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.'
"'Prudence'? 'Self-regulate our free expression'? No, I'm afraid that's just giving the Muslim world the message: You've won, I surrender, please stop kicking me.
"But they never do. Because, to use the Arabic proverb with which Robert Ferrigno opens his new novel, 'Prayers for the Assassin,' set in an Islamic Republic of America, 'A falling camel attracts many knives.' In Denmark and France and the Netherlands and Britain, Islam senses the camel is falling and this is no time to stop knifing him."
Here's the question: Can the West, which believes nothing much beyond a few mealy-mouthed platitudes of multiculturalism, withsand an onslaught from a society that believes with red-hot intensity?
And ombudsperson Deborah Howell's attempt to swagger falls flat:
"The Post has written thousands of stories about abortion, forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church, and has printed countless recipes using pork, forbidden to Orthodox Jews and Muslims. And the Post publishes stories about drinking alcohol, forbidden by Islam and other faiths.
"That also doesn't mean that The Post doesn't occasionally offend readers' sensibilities, religious or otherwise. A recent story on over-the-top bar and bat mitzvahs in New York offended several Jewish readers. But you're not going to see a cartoon lampooning the Virgin Mary or the Jewish high holy days in The Post. So you wouldn't expect to see a cartoon making fun of Muhammad."
I never thought the mighty Washington Post would be reduced to this. (I am unable to tell if the Post carried a picture of the Virgin Mary made partly from elephant dung, a work of "art" shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999. The Virgin Mary piece was reproduced only last week in a New York Times piece on the cartoon riots which, interestingly, refrained from carrying the offending Danish cartoons. Anybody out there know?)
Ms. Howell makes a sad little attempt at bravado in her finale:
"Being a First Amendment freak, I support those newspapers' right to publish the cartoons. [Executive Editor Len] Downie made a different and equally valid decision not to publish."
Some "First Amendment freak." Note: Ms. Howell supports the newspaper's right to publish the cartoons--she doesn't seem to support actually publishing them. It would be so much better if newspapers would tell the truth--it's dangerous to publish these pictures. We're scared out of our gourds. The fake bravado is unbecoming. But so is cowardice.
The cartoon wars are just the beginning, as columnist Mark Steyn notes:
"From Europe's biggest-selling newspaper, the Sun: ''Furious Muslims have blasted adult shop [i.e., sex shop] Ann Summers for selling a blowup male doll called Mustafa Shag.'
"Not literally 'blasted' in the Danish Embassy sense, or at least not yet. Quite how Britain's Muslim Association found out about Mustafa Shag in order to be offended by him is not clear. It may be that there was some confusion: given that 'blowup males' are one of Islam's leading exports, perhaps some believers went along expecting to find Ahmed and Walid modeling the new line of Semtex belts. Instead, they were confronted by just another filthy infidel sex gag. The Muslim Association's complaint, needless to say, is that the sex toy 'insults the Prophet Muhammad--who also has the title al-Mustapha.'
"In a world in which Danish cartoons insult the Prophet and Disney Piglet mugs insult the Prophet and Burger King chocolate ice-cream swirl designs insult the Prophet, maybe it would just be easier to make a list of things that don't insult him. Nonetheless, the Muslim Association wrote to the Ann Summers sex-shop chain, 'We are asking you to have our Most Revered Prophet's name 'Mustafa' and the afflicted word 'shag' removed.'"
Whatever you think about adult shops (I find them abhorent but don't advocate additional laws against pornography--we should just shun known users), the West is all too willing to capitulate to non-Western values. Here's Steyn on the surrender of the West:
"The European Union's Justice and Security Commissioner, Franco Frattini, said on Thursday that the EU would set up a 'media code' to encourage 'prudence' in the way they cover, ah, certain sensitive subjects. As Signor Frattini explained it to the Daily Telegraph, 'The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression. . . . We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right.'
"'Prudence'? 'Self-regulate our free expression'? No, I'm afraid that's just giving the Muslim world the message: You've won, I surrender, please stop kicking me.
"But they never do. Because, to use the Arabic proverb with which Robert Ferrigno opens his new novel, 'Prayers for the Assassin,' set in an Islamic Republic of America, 'A falling camel attracts many knives.' In Denmark and France and the Netherlands and Britain, Islam senses the camel is falling and this is no time to stop knifing him."
Here's the question: Can the West, which believes nothing much beyond a few mealy-mouthed platitudes of multiculturalism, withsand an onslaught from a society that believes with red-hot intensity?
<< Loose Canon Home