Cartoon Hypocrisy on the Right
08 February 2006 4:14 pm by Taylor Marsh
Cartoon Hypocrisy on the Right
UPDATE: Juan Cole on “Cartoongate”
Hypocrisy of the right-wing blogosphere.
Remember the controversy over Newsweek and the Koran? Last year Newsweek printed
an allegation about mistreatment of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base that
— although strikingly similar to interrogation techniques actually used to
intimidate Muslims at Guantanamo — was not substantiated by an official government
investigation. It hardly mattered: Abroad, Muslim politicians and clerics promoted
and exaggerated the Koran story, just as they are now promoting and exaggerating
the Danish cartoon story. The result was rioting and violence on a scale similar
to the rioting and violence of the past week.
A
Cartoon's Portrait of America
The right does not do nuance, so no wonder they just don't get it.
Andrew Sullivan has taken the New
York Times to task today for declaring the cartoons “callous and feeble.”
He calls them “cowards”
because they won't publish them.
The Washington Post won't
publish the cartoons because they want to “refrain from gratuitous
assaults on religious symbols.” This is just b.s., because the Post had
no trouble printing pictures of “Piss Christ.”
On the web you can see all
the Muslim cartoons you want. But that's not good enough, because certain
elements of the right have decided to pressure papers into running the cartoons.
When this first started, I thought this was an issue on which
I could have common
ground with the wingnuts. Free speech is free speech, let the cartoons fly!
But after watching the violence, reading about the machinations of publishing
the cartoons, as well as the wingnut writing campaign, it's clear they want
something I do not. The right is also not interested in understanding the climate
and global change rocking the Middle East, which the Muslim cartoon issue has
revealed to it's core.
Americans and the West have, once again, underestimated the Muslim
world's understanding of what it means to live in a democracy. We can't simply demand
they move along faster. Is it courageous to print the cartoons at this point, seeing
the violence they have unleashed? Or is it more courageous to decline to publish, in order to judiciously weigh the consequences of waving
a red flag in a region where we are currently engaged in a serious war?
I find it troubling that American newspapers aren't being honest
and fully candid about the reasons for not publishing. Only AAN has come forth
to say “as AAN editors and publishers try to determine if this
is an issue of free speech, religious intolerance or cultural misunderstanding,”
which is the real crux of the dilemma.
You can't simply demand American publishers and editors display
Muslim cartoons we are seeing incite serious violence, destruction
and even threatening destabilization in the Middle East. To wave the banner
of free speech without context, history and the democratic earthquake taking
place in places we obviously don't understand is to put what we are fighting
for at risk.
The right's inability to see this is sheer hypocrisy, mixed with ignorance and arrogance. They accused
Newsweek of inciting violence by incorrectly reporting the Koran was being used
by soldiers to taunt prisoners, which turned out to be true in at least one
case. But they have no problem in aiding and abetting more violence that may have been manufactured through these Danish cartoons.
We've seen it on Abu Ghraib, with Bill O'Reilly ranting that no
more pictures should be revealed. When Newsweek originally got the story wrong,
the header rang out: “Newsweek lied, people died.”
Political cartoons are a formidable weapon in democratic societies.
The Muslims incited to violence, whether opportunistic or righteous, obviously
don't understand that free speech means just that, without boundaries. It's
responsible for editors and publishers to weigh the consequences at this point.
None of them should feel compelled to publish, nor threatened with violence if they do. However, between those two realities is a canyon of cataclysmic cultural confusion.
