Frankly, I say a pox on both their houses. Seems silly to go out of your way to stir up a hornets nest, as the Danish paper did. But then, Muslims don’t do themselves any favors when they act like their critics’ worst stereotypes of them. Conservatives are probably right when they point out the media’s raw double standard when it comes to disparaging Christianity verus disparaging Muslimdom. And they’re also right that there’s no comparing the degree of retaliation between the two. For all their excesses in using government to force the rest of us to live by their moral code, Christians at least don’t threaten violence and beheadings when a publicly-funded art museum shows the Piss Christ, for example.

Still, I can’t get over the idea that this was needless provocation. That doesn’t in any way justify the Muslim backlash. And the backlash itself shows just how uncomfortably ubiquitous militant, reactionary Islam is (as if that weren’t already obvious).

But by the same token, if you know that’s the reaction you’re going to get, why go out of your way to invite it?

Here’s a hypothetical from recent history: It’s Spring, 1992. You’re the editor of the L.A. Times. The Rodney King riots have finally died down. One of your more politically incorrect editorial board members suggests that you run a series of blatantly racist editorial cartoons. He’s not racist, he insists. But he thinks you out to run them for the sole reason of showing that you, the newspaper, won’t let riots and the threat of violence intimidate or influence what you put in print.

Seems to me that that’s a fair analogy to what took place in Denmark. And it also seems to me that it would be petty, pointless, and unnecessarily confrontational to run the racist editorial cartoons.

Of course, yes, I think that the Danish paper had the right to run the cartoons. But that doesn’t mean it was a wise or prudent or necessary thing to do.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 9:35 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.