Before Marvin begins his explanation he launches into a complaint that he has been the recipient of an e-mail campaign on this issue. My response to Marvin is, get used to it. E-mails are easy to forward and their volume is an indication that people are interested in the subject. I should add that receiving an e-mail is not nearly as attention-getting as receiving a bomb threat, or actually being bombed; this being the difference between people who care about a free press and those who wish to abort any negative portrayal of Mohammad.
Marvin begins:
The cartoons — actually a series of 12 — first appeared in September in the conservative Danish daily, Jyllands-Posten.
[Note the adjective: “conservative.” We are rarely treated to descriptive adjectives when referring to – for example the New York Times, the unofficial organ of the Liberal wing of the Democratic party]
They showed the founder of Islam, among other things, wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, and, in another, standing at heaven’s gates, arms raised, saying to what appears to be suicide bombers, “Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins.”
[Note that there were 12 drawings but Marvin describes two of them. Why? What do the other 10 depict?]
The drawings were considered by Muslims to be a violation of a protocol not to print any images of Muhammad, much less those of this nature. The drawings — and their subsequent reprinting in Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere abroad — sparked violent protests, deaths and threats.
[Well, actually they are not and they did not. Images of Mohammad are available in Islamic countries, even those ruled by Islamic clergy, like Iran. And the drawings appeared in the Jyllands-Posten four months before the riots began and were even published in an Egyptian newspaper without any rioting. So Marvin’s recitation of facts and opinions is wrong.]
Overwhelmingly, the American print media have refused to publish the offending cartoons, choosing instead to describe them.
[Actually this is not true either. As Marvin has demonstrated in his description of the cartoons, he characterizes two of them and ignores the rest. There is a reason for this. For anyone who has gone to the internet to view the cartoons, the worst than can be said of some is that some are mildly offensive if you are very easily offended and most are not offensive at all. But since the Virginian Pilot refuses to print the images, we have no way to make an independent judgment unless we go to the Internet.]
Ditto for the broadcast media, although ABC did show one of the cartoons during an evening news broadcast, and other networks have shown a blurred version of one or a fragment of a full cartoon.
[This contrasts shockingly with the media’s treatment of the Abu Ghraib pictures. They could not get enough of these images.]
The Pilot has not published the cartoons in its news section or on the editorial page.
Would we? I’ve learned to never say never. So the answer is: Probably not — at this point.
[So far we have gotten a distorted description of what happened and we are then told we can’t see the pictures in the Virginian Pilot. No reasons for this have so far been advanced.]
I know that answer may rile some readers. Like Michael Riley of South Mills, N.C., who e-mailed us that The Pilot, over the years, “has printed numerous cartoons offensive to Christians and even a few offensive to the Jewish religion.” He wanted to know if the American media’s treatment of the offending cartoons amounts to “a double standard or fear,” adding that the matter raises credibility issues.
[Please note that Marvin does not respond to this accusation. Perhaps because there is no response that would not bring derisive laughter.]
Pilot editor Denis Finley says he would publish the cartoons “if the right circumstances compelled me to do so.”
For instance? “One,” he said, “would be that it hits closer to home ... What if a business owner displayed them in his or her shop and the shop was torched? I think I would run them. Right now, they are more the topic of intellectual discussion in this country.”
[Let’s see, embassies burned, people killed, riots in European capitals, an American base attacked by an angry mob, but Denis Finley wants to wait until a local shop is torched before he’ll print the pictures? For this he gets paid the big bucks to make these kind of news judgments. Of course this is not the real reason. This is not the reason the entire American media has “spiked” these cartoons. This is so lame, it doesn’t pass the smell test.]
“The best day to publish would have been the first day of the story, but at that time I don’t think we understood how big this story would become,” Finley said. “To publish them on the news pages now would be a little bit Johnny-Come-Lately.”
[Oh, come on Denis, by publishing now you would scoop all but the Philadelphia Inquirer. You would be ahead of the NY Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC. Isn’t this what every hard-charging newsman wants? To be the first? Johnny-Come-lately? Hell, Denis, you would be leading the parade. Or…. Are you afraid that there won’t be a parade and then the collective wrath of CAIR and every Islamic jihadist will converge on your little piece of real estate?]
Finley, who said he doesn’t like a lot of the editorial cartoons we publish but defends our right to do so, thinks that the Muhammad cartoons “would certainly be appropriate” on The Pilot’s editorial pages. But he can’t say for sure he would have used them originally had he been the chief of the editorial page . Finley has no involvement whatsoever with the editorial page.
[But Denis, no one is asking them to be run on the editorial pages. These are NEWS! The should be published so that your readers can understand the controversy and make their own judgements.]
Editorial page editor Dennis Hartig, who said he never saw the cartoons, isn’t sure if he would have used them when they were originally produced. He does know that he “would not run them now,” he says, “because the context has changed. Given the violence and the counter reaction in Europe, to run them now would raise questions about our motives that didn’t previously exist.”
[Dennis, your motives are so transparent that it's only a question of why you are so craven: is it physical cowardice or intellectual cowardice, or a combination of both?]
On the broader question of spoofing religious institutions, Hartig said: “Generally, we avoid cartoons that ridicule the sacred. But religion isn’t off limits and it can’t be because of the role religion plays in our public life,” he said. Hartig noted that Pat Robertson, the priest sex abuse scandal, prayer in schools, the Ten Commandments monument, gay marriage and the War on Christmas have been frequent subjects of the cartoons.
The question, Hartig said, is where to draw the line. “We have to be careful that we try to avoid a cartoon that some might see as sacrilege. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don’t. It’s a tough balancing act.”
[One wonders what cartoons Dennis Hartig rejected as an act of sacrilege. I would like just one or two examples Dennis. Just e-mail them to me or put them in the comments. Because, without proof, Dennis, I have to put your assertion in the “unlikely” column.]
It’s a balancing act that applies to more than just religious topics, says Hartig, noting that The Pilot did not use a recent controversial editorial cartoon about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a bedridden figure with no arms or legs “out of concern that it would be misunderstood in our heavily military community.” Rumsfeld, while not off limits, “has not gotten any free passes from our cartoonists on the left or right,” Hartig adds.
Individuals who wish to see the cartoons can find them on the Internet. Indeed, some free-speech advocates and others have lobbied the U.S. media, largely unsuccessfully, for Web site postings to allow readers to see the cartoons. Like most major American newspapers, The Pilot has chosen not to post the cartoons, nor to provide a Web site for finding them.
[One more reason that the newspaper industry is dying while the internet is replacing it as the source of news and information for a large and growing segment of the public.]
Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, National Public Radio’s ombudsman, wrote last week: “In the United States, the war in Iraq has already exacerbated tensions between Americans and the Muslim World. Posting a cartoon might be seen as throwing more kerosene on a fire that is already out of control.”
The same can be said for printing the cartoons at this point.
[So there you have it. We are not printing these cartoons because we do not want to inflame the Muslim world. We will print pictures of Abu Ghraib and keep that controversy boiling. We will print articles about pissing on the Koran and keep that controversy boiling. We will tell the Arabs that we are torturing their people and keep that controversy boiling. But … we … won’t … show … our … readers … the … 12 … cartoons. Because we don’t want to cause any more controversy with our Islamic brethren. Oh, wait. Here’s the headline in the February 12th edition:
Video allegedly shows Iraqis being beaten by British soldiers.
Nah, that won’t inflame the Muslim world.]
UPDATE:
Oh, that beating by the Brits? Happened two years ago. If we're lucky the Pilot will post the images of Muhammad sometime in 2008.
UPDATE2:
Here's what really happened to cause the Moslem riots. It really wasn't the 12 cartoons, although they played a part.
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