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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I feel just as comfortable defending that as the Jewish attorney from the ACLU who defended Neo-Nazis in National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, 432 U.S. 43 (1977).

Jeff I think you are missing the point here.[/quote]

Agree. This thread seems to be about reasons for the attack. (Correct me if I'm wrong!) Going down the rabbit hole of asking "were the cartoons offensive?" implies there might be a legitimate discussion to be had about these stereotypes as possible reasons for the attack. IMO, there's not. I think we all agree that these particular caractures might be offensive. But, satire is by definition offensive, and at least CH offends everybody (I posted the three links to CH cartoons above). Also, whether we like it or not, satire often goes beyond somebody's political stance to the point of mocking W's big ears or Boehner's yellow skin. Finally, freedom of speech. So, if you want to have a discussion about whether satire should be limited to somebody's political or religious views, and cartoonists should leave out the size of the nose (Muslims or Jews) or ears (W), that seems like a very different discussion. [/quote]

I think both of you are missing my point. I am quite sure that the Jewish attorney who defended the Nazis in Skokie made exactly the same distinction I have been discussing. He was defending the right of Nazis to march, not defending Nazi ideology.

Distinct from that, Boehner does have orange skin, Obama has big ears, etc. Exaggerating those characteristics is normal and not offensive. But, not all Arabs and certainly not all Muslims have big noses. What's being displayed in those cartoons are not individuals, but stereotypes. I find the perpetuation of certain stereotypes offensive and not the sort of thing that I want to defend. However, I will defend the right to create and disseminate offensive material, even if I won't defend the material itself. Also, to be clear, material that I don't want to defend includes parodies of the Holocaust.

Again, as much as I dislike some of the cartoons produced by Charlie Hedbo, I strongly support the magazine's right to publish them and totally, unequivocally condemn the murders.

[/quote]

OK, you're saying it's OK to mock Boehner's skin (which some say is part of a skin treatment) or Obama's ears, but not to generalize to whole populations. You might be right. We could probably do a thread on that, but I think we agree that's not the point here.

I think why some of us want to keep these conversations very, very distinct is because (a) the question of culpability is a slippery slope, yet (b) degrees of culpability shouldn't matter for freedom of speech. Like Muslima, you're starting down the slippery slope about whether CH was partly at fault. I think some of us are reacting to how this could be construed: I know you're not going there, but others would extend this to arguing that maybe CH deserved some sort of retaliation (a boycott or something), or even that CH had it coming (the ISIS extreme). [/quote]

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