That Danish Cartoon Controversy

John is one of many readers who somehow felt I might have something to say about this:

I’m a weekly reader of your column and cartoon and I’m a fan of most of your writing. I just wanted to see what your opinion is of the recent blurbs about the Danish newspaper apologizing and the near unanimous backpedaling by EU members regarding backlash to the 12 editorial cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. I tred several cursory internet searches and couldn’t find heads or tails of the cartoons and was actually both surprised and impressed with the immediate and violent protest to this seemingly innocuous set of drawings. I think the difficulty to my internalization of this is the relative lack of sensitivity that I have as an American or westerner for outrage over symbols. Especially this level of outrage. Where does the difference in culture come from and if I can’t grasp that, how does an occupying army of 19 year olds grasp that? It seems that a set of 12 images on paper sparked a more violent protest than US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and in a much shorter time frame. The US government doesn’t even understand the culture of predominantly Islamic nations, let alone a reason for their own military actions.

I’m willing to bet that not a single major news outlet and possibly not even any blogs will dare to reprint those 12 cartoons today. That is fascinating and I can not grasp a single parallel in the US.

My first reaction is disgust. Why did the Danes apologize? They ought to have stood behind their cartoonist. And even if the cartoons were offensive to the point that they crossed the line (an impossibility as far as I’m concerned, but then I make my living because of freedom of the press), the editors who published them is wholly to blame. Artists create; editors censor. Once an editor signs off on a cartoon, it becomes his or her responsibility.

Sadly too few American editors seem to grasp that. They fire the cartoonist when it’s the editor who should step down.

I’m also disgusted at American newspapers who did not reprint the cartoons, if only to show their readers what the big fuss was about. How can readers judge a graphic without seeing it? I too have been victimized by this practice. My “cartoon FDNY 2011, about the firefighters after 9/11, was not nearly as offensive to actually see than it was to read about in brief excerpts.

More disgust: Why don’t press accounts reference the cartoonist’s name? They’re not “Danish magazine cartoons,” they’re cartoons by a Danish cartoonist that ran in a magazine. You see the same forced anonymity here, e.g., “a New Yorker cartoon shows a man…” There ARE no New Yorker cartoons. There are cartoons that appear in the New Yorker. It’s gross that word guys are so determined to turn cartoonists into non-persons. At least this guy might get a little PR out of this mess.

Even more disgust: Why are so many right-wing newspapers like France Soir and right-wing blogs up in arms over this act of censorship? Because it’s a chance to attack Muslims! Where were these advocates for free speech when I was dropped by newspapers like the New York Times because of my anti-Bush politics? Screaming for my head. Bunch of fucking hypocrites; they only favor free speech when they agree with it.

Which is why I refuse to join the media pile-on against the would-be anti-Danish censors: I don’t do media pile-ons, thank you. I don’t think those cartoons were particularly useful or even accurate depictions of Islam, yet I do think there’s nothing wrong with publishing them. But I’m not going to join the hounds posting them on my blog in order to seem all pseudo-brave and shit.