Saturday, February 04, 2006

Buckley on the Muslim and non-Muslim discomfort with freedom of the press

Yes indeed Christians are often ridiculed; so are the Jews in the Middle East in appalling dispatch and fashion. Kayne West wears a crown of thorns in mockery of Christ. We've been through the madonna in dung and Piss Christ and on a bad day Howard Stern. But we're used to it since we are liberal and tolerant and very Western and committed to a free and adventursome press. By the way did you ever see Christians in the Bible Belt pelting an embassy? Bill Buckley sums it all up.

Iconoclastic expressions in America are broadly condemned as being in bad taste. However, there is certainly freedom in America to deride Christ. This is done every day on Broadway, and every other day in Hollywood. Americans do not take up arms in protest. Derisory material at the expense of Jews is permitted only if the executioner is a Jewish comedian. Care on this front is a welcome legacy of the Holocaust: No jokes are told by visitors to Buchenwald.

But is the day imminently ahead when Muslim influence expresses itself here as vigorously as it is doing in Europe? How exactly to account for the nearly universal decision of the press not to reproduce the Danish cartoons? The arrival of decorum in Slate?

The question not being ventilated with sufficient thoroughness is: What are Muslim leaders doing to dissociate their faith from the ends to which it is being taken by the terrorists?

And file under "even a broken clock is right twice a day." Andrew Sullivan stresses a good point.

And lost in the selective outrage over the cartoons is the leftist mayor of London is the kind of company he keeps.

The pathethic Boston Globe sides with the enemy of freedom all in the name of tolerant multiculturalism. What did the Globe say about Piss Christ?

No comments: