jsteele wrote:
I think you are confusing two separate things. The free speech case involving Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt was about a cartoon. I am not surprised that the cartoon was published in law school textbooks. But, I pretty sure it was not published by the mainstream media that is now publishing anti-Muslim cartoons. But, I was actually talking about Larry Flynt getting shot, which is separate from the lawsuit. The shooter was upset because of interracial photos in the magazine. Nobody would expect the Washington Post to publish those X-rated photos to show that Larry Flynt's free expression wouldn't be infringed upon by someone with a gun. Ironically, nobody would expect the Post to publish x-rated photos because they would offend the Post's readers. But, apparently, offending Muslims is no big deal.

Also, I would distinguish between publishing the cartoons as a means of demonstrating the type of drawings published by CH and publishing the drawings as an act of solidarity. As a news item, I think a range of drawings -- not only those about Muslims -- should be shown. A full understanding of CH requires knowing how it represents Jews and Christians. Otherwise, a distorted view of the magazine would be presented. But, again, the media wouldn't want to show a cartoon captioned "Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost" that illustrates the trinity with a drawing of males engaged in anal intercourse. That would offend someone other than Muslims.

Anonymous wrote:
Now maybe we can move on. Perhaps you can address my earlier post asking why you said Muslima's quote made a good point - but you ignored one of its key themes, which is that the journalists should have been smart enough to cave in to threats of violence. And whether the point of the cartoons was not to deliberately insult people, but rather to defy those who are threatening violence.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
You are not doing a particularly good job of demonstrating your lack of sensitivity. By the way, I had no idea whether you are male or female and actually had assumed you were male. Had I known you were female, I would have told you to shut up and make me a sandwich (joking, joking, joking, I swear I am joking). A need to be calm and less sensitive is not something that I attribute to one sex over the other. Members of both sexes can stand to do both.

"Butthurt" poster here. Way to dig yourself in, Jeff! You found several more ways, in several new sentences, to keep telling her to "calm down." Meanwhile you're not exactly ignoring her, instead you keep coming back to argue your side and to tell her to calm down again. I've been there: it's passive aggressive, it can be intimidating when it comes from the moderator, but most of all, it was uncalled for the first time you said it.

Ironic that you are posting this in a thread in which the right to be offensive is being so strongly defended. I was using humor. Doesn't that make it okay?

Telling her that she isn't helping her case, and wrapping up with some more stuff about calming down, is humor? Well you learn something every day! Or, you're being passive aggressive. I'll give you this: there was humor sandwiched in the middle.

Yes, it's ironic. Or maybe not. I guess I feel like you have, in the past, unfairly challenged my right to question some of Muslima's more dodgy statements. While Muslima brings a new perspective, sometimes she's full of it, whether she's your pet or not. No, you never banned me or kicked me off DCUM. But I interpreted the moderator's challenge to my right to speak my mind (and to challenge Muslima's more egregious claims) as a form of aggression. No kidding, and I've seen other DCUM users say similar things. People who get slammed by you wonder if they're going to be the next person you out, like that thrift shop owner or the GMU student.

Now maybe we can move on. Perhaps you can address my earlier post asking why you said Muslima's quote made a good point - but you ignored one of its key themes, which is that the journalists should have been smart enough to cave in to threats of violence. And whether the point of the cartoons was not to deliberately insult people, but rather to defy those who are threatening violence.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very thoughtful post pp.

Small blurb in today's Post: Judge orders women soldiers to stop accompanying 5 Guantanamo defendents as it is causing them religious distress.
So we have as a society fought for these women's inclusion in the armed forces, prepped and sent them to this locale, and now they are not allowed to perform their duties....because they are women? What am I.missing here??????

Cultural relativism.

Think about how these guys treat women back home, but we are having American women soldiers defer?

Thats like saying that if a woman is arrested in the US she has no right to have a female strip search her because it is a function of male guards job to strip search prisoners.

The women were escorting the prisoners to trial, not strip searching them

I just think its interesting that while we mourn charlie hedbo our own freedoms are being quietly chip chipped away at and undermined.

+1
It's not the same at all. Imagine if the guards refused to be escorted by black officers. Would the U.S. military cave? I think not. But for some reason women's equality is fine to sacrifice.

Sorry, meant "prisoners", not "guards", clearly.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
You are not doing a particularly good job of demonstrating your lack of sensitivity. By the way, I had no idea whether you are male or female and actually had assumed you were male. Had I known you were female, I would have told you to shut up and make me a sandwich (joking, joking, joking, I swear I am joking). A need to be calm and less sensitive is not something that I attribute to one sex over the other. Members of both sexes can stand to do both.

"Butthurt" poster here. Way to dig yourself in, Jeff! You found several more ways, in several new sentences, to keep telling her to "calm down." Meanwhile you're not exactly ignoring her, instead you keep coming back to argue your side and to tell her to calm down again. I've been there: it's passive aggressive, it can be intimidating when it comes from the moderator, but most of all, it was uncalled for the first time you said it.

Ironic that you are posting this in a thread in which the right to be offensive is being so strongly defended. I was using humor. Doesn't that make it okay?

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNN just said that Charlie will be published next week and instead of 60,000 copies printed, there will be one million.

I find some of the cartoons questionable but I would gladly purchase a copy if I could.

And Yasir Qadhi couldn't have said it better:

"Can you imagine if a racist cartoon, or an anti-Semitic cartoon, caused some physical attack, that news agencies around the globe would reprint those cartoons?!
Somehow, when it comes to offensive images against Muslims, it becomes necessary to display those images continuously in order to make a point: "You had better allow us to say and do whatever we will, without the least care and concern of decency and morals!"
Again, this is NOT to justify these brutal attacks, but it is to point out the double standards that do seem to exist when it comes to mocking Islam. It will come as absolutely no surprise to us to find out that a satirist in the EXACT SAME newspaper was fired, and then put on trial, for an anti-Semitic article that he had written (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/French-cartoonist-Sine-on-tria…). And previously, I had quoted a story of a similar nature regarding the Danish cartoon controversy: the same newspaper had refused to print cartoons mocking the Holocaust.
There is no doubt that killing these cartoonists is not allowed (firstly, the entire issue of blasphemy laws and its application in the modern world of nation-states is being discussed by leading scholars, and there are multiple views on this; secondly, all those who quote incidents from the Seerah: I reiterate, it is impermissible for a person to take the 'law' into his own hands and be judge, jury and executioner even in an Islamic land - how much more so when Muslim minorities are living in a land that is not ruled by their laws).
At the same time, it is also idiotic to continue provoking a group of people who have a long list of their own internal and external political and social grievances that stretch back for many decades (here I mean the N. African Muslim population of France), and then expect that nothing will happen.
As usual, we are stuck between a rock and a hard stone. On the one hand, we have the excesses of our own internal angry followers, who always justify every violence because of what 'they' have done, and on the other hand we have the arrogance, intransigence and hypocrisy of segments of the Western world, who cannot see that they as well have a huge part to play in the rising tide of anger and violence."

Nope. Sorry. No. You don't get to say it's idiotic to have offensive satire about Islam. No. You don't. That same publication had satire about Catholicism, Judaism, etc. There's no special targeting of Muslims. And you don't get to say "well, if you satirize Muslims, you're idiots not to expect violence". No.
The truth isn't that people make a point of satirizing Muslims. The point is that EVERYONE gets satirized. And only Muslims seem to get violent about that.
If your God can't deal with satire, your God is too small.

+1. I love how some muslims like to pick and choose what to get incensed about. Somehow it was ok for these terrorists to go completely against their religion and view child porn, drink, use drugs and commit crimes. Yet it was absolutely not ok (to the point that you have to kill!) to see cartoons violating their religion. Guess what? You cannot control how other people view you, your religion, and choose to talk about it. It's not persecution. It's a matter of life. Suck it up and move on. Since when it's ok to expect murder as a price to pay when you disagree with someone?

I think the point of the post Muslima quoted is valid. Why does demonstrating support for freedom of expression require publishing offensive cartoons? I understand sticking it to the terrorists, but is it necessary to offend non-terrorists in the process? I don't remember newspapers publishing photos from Hustler after Larry Flynt was shot. This is like the point I was trying to make yesterday. It is one thing to say that you disagree with what someone says, but defend their right to say it. It is a completely different story when you are the one saying it.

I see that point, but I think in this case it's inapposite. In fact, articles writing about the Hustler free speech case *did* show the content of the cartoon. It was right there in my law school textbook (one of the few memorable things). The situation is that some people killed some cartoonist/journalists because of content that offended their religious beliefs. I think that the content of the supposed motivation for the attacks is part of that story, so it would seem odd to censor it when telling that story.
I would never have published cartoons like this in a fictional world where I had a magazine to publish, *before this attack*, because I do think they're somewhat offensive (though seem to be equal-opportunity offensive to so many groups, not just one or two) and it's not something that seems particularly interesting to me. But if I were a newspaper publisher now, I totally would, because they're part of a very newsworthy story.

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:
You are not doing a particularly good job of demonstrating your lack of sensitivity. By the way, I had no idea whether you are male or female and actually had assumed you were male. Had I known you were female, I would have told you to shut up and make me a sandwich (joking, joking, joking, I swear I am joking). A need to be calm and less sensitive is not something that I attribute to one sex over the other. Members of both sexes can stand to do both.

"Butthurt" poster here. Way to dig yourself in, Jeff! You found several more ways, in several new sentences, to keep telling her to "calm down." Meanwhile you're not exactly ignoring her, instead you keep coming back to argue your side and to tell her to calm down again. I've been there: it's passive aggressive, it can be intimidating when it comes from the moderator, but most of all, it was uncalled for the first time you said it.

jsteele wrote:

Not sensitive either. If you read my other comments in this thread, you'll see I'm quite rational. I noted an apparent contradiction in your statements. That implies nothing about my emotional state. I do object to men frequently characterizing women who disagree with them as needing to "calm down" or being "too sensitive", though. I don't know if you personally do that regularly or not, but I'll note it when I see it.