another reason to like journalists


My hometown broadsheet, editorializing about Those Danish Cartoons, states that responsible newpapers like itself… “have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”

It then promtly illustrates its own story on the Danish cartoons by showing a picture (click the link) of the famous, or infamous, “Dung Mary” … a collage of the Virgin Mary with cutouts from pornographic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung.
Scrivener.net

All right, listen up. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The newspapers are lying to you about why they’re not showing the cartoons. They don’t give a rat’s ass about offending anyone’s religious sensibilities. Dude, offending religious sensibilities is art.

They’re just scared.

Notice too, that offending Muslims has never been an impediment to full disclosure when soldiers’ asses were on the line. This is different. This is journalist asses on the line.

Posted on February 14th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General, cartoon

4 Responses to “another reason to like journalists”

  1. Paco Malo, on February 16th, 2006 at 10:50 am Said:

    Anybody remember “Piss Christ” or Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ?

    Though I agree that journalists, or more accurately the corporations that the journalists work for, are running scared on printing these images of The Prophet, that is not the issue here.

    This is a battle in the war between openess as a Western cultural value of the 21st century and a desire by certain cultures to limit access to information their citizens get. Try running “Tienamen Square” on Google’s new Chinese version search engine and see how limited the hits you get are.

    To paraphrase the New Hampshire license plate, “Speak Free or Die”.

  2. A radically spiritual progressive libertarian, on February 19th, 2006 at 10:53 pm Said:

    Amen, Brother Paco!

  3. pwyll, on February 20th, 2006 at 3:53 pm Said:

    I think we all agree on the value of free speech. I dare say that my emnity towards the regimes which would presume to dictate what can be said (Islamofacists, Communists) is more bitter and unrelenting than yours, my esteemed visitors.

    I did not write to praise free speech, but to mock the cowards and hypocrites who comprise the larger portion of American journalism.

    I’ll quote Glen Reynolds:

    “The unfortunate question remaining for folks in the media is this: Now that people have realized they’re [they =Western media] easily intimidated by threats of violence, who’ll be the next to try that approach? And in what cause?”

  4. Paco Malo, on February 21st, 2006 at 5:01 pm Said:

    Money is the root of all evil.

    For once, I shall refrain from any song-lyric-quotin’, leave it to my friend the “radically spiritual progressive libertarian” to throw in the appropriate New Testament quotes, and just say it straight up.

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