Okay....time for some thoughts on Danish cartoons.
-Let's get the obvious out of the way. Free Speech - Good. Burning shit to the ground - Bad. Freedom - Good. Making crazy threats - Bad. I hope you feel better.
-Well it certainly is nice to see the outpouring of respect for free speech coming from the right-wing in this country. It might even have some credibility if the people like Michelle Malkin, that bitch over at Atlas Shrugs, Little Green Footballs (aptly dubbed by James Wolcott as "a disorganized Nuremburg rally) et al weren't stone cold racists. Now, the only thing racists like these folks hate more than Muslims and liberals is being called on their racism. That's too bad. They are. But I am genuinely glad that I live somewhere where racists are free to spout their Constitutionally protected, non-violent racism. Freedom of speech is a very, very important thing. Oh, I fully expect Malkin and co. to return to their calls of "sedition", "treason" etc. next time somebody hurts their feelings.
-The rightwing 'blogburst," as the kids say, is interesting because it comes precisely from the same people who go apeshit over equally dumb, offensive, bullshit. SoCalPundit, he who bemoans the rough treatment given to artists like Stephen Baldwin, completely misses the point when he cites things like Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ." If you're offended by Piss Christ, the answer is not "nyah nyah nyah...we're going to do it too." This has become the one of the core tenets of wingnuttery. Cite something your opponents/enemies do (they needn't actually do it, making shit up works well too) then claim that you are just "responding" or "balancing" or whatever word we're using these days.
-Somehow, the Bush administration manages to step in the middle of all this and get it wrong. You hear a lot of talk about "responsibility" coming from these shitheads, whether it's these cartoons, secret prison camps, torture, eavesdropping, whatever. They're message is always that what really matters is deference to authority and deference to "good taste" as defined by them. They do not believe in free speech. They do not believe in freedom. They believe in power and circumscribing the rights of those weaker than them.
-On that same note, you have the Joint Chiefs of Staff sending a letter of protest over a Tom Toles cartoon. The cartoon shows a soldier whose lost all of his limbs and a certain "Dr. Rumsfeld" making a callous quote while standing above him. The obvious message is that Rumsfeld is a callous asshole, which he is. But, the right uses the cartoons as another phony example of a "smear against the troops." One guy, I can't remember who right now, actually made the circular argument that went like this: Cartooning is freedom of expression (it is), the military is responsible for this freedom (it is not), therefore, you shouldn't have the right to criticize the military since without them you wouldn't have freedom. Got that? Neither do I.
-Syria is not whipping up the religious fanatics in its country. Syria is a tiny, poor, unstable nation who is justifiably afraid of it's own fanatics. The Syrian government, though not good guys, would like everyone to calm the hell down. Condoleezza Rice is lying when she says otherwise.
-Ditto Hamas. They've actually been out telling people to relax over this cartoon shit. I thought they were supposed to be the "unstable" ones.
-I'm not particulary religious, but I see no profit in going out of my way to offend people for the sake of offending them, which is what the racists on the right seek. You haven't seen this kind of activity since the last racist "blogburst" directed at France and its riots in November. As scared as the pant-pissers are over Muslims coming to Davenport, Iowa and initiating a mass gay-wedding ceremony, they sure do seem to be itching for a fight. Not that any of them actually fight mind you. I believe the word for this is "coward."
-Don't think these protests are only about some silly cartoons. The resentment expressed here has been building up for a long time, and will not go away anytime soon.
Posted by mike at February 10, 2006 06:10 PM