MY HEAD HURTS!!!!
Ok,
I know how freedom of speech, religious tolerance, islamophobia, the war on terror, cartoons, and so on and so on are like, you know, really important.
But why do we have to spend most of this week and probably next talking about this cartoon issue?
The way I understood arguments/discussion/debate/general inter-human communication was that we used our energies chewing over issues the solution to which is a. controversial or b. unknown
This whole cartoon of a guy with a bomb on his head is clearly something that raises passions - I'd be a fool to deny that.
But really - I'm yet to meet a single soul who doesn't have share this one very simple view on the matter:
"Newspapers have a right to publish what they want - that's freedom of the press, but they have a responsibilty not to gratuitously offend - that's common decency. "
So what is the controversy? If anyone disagrees with that formulation I'd like to know why and on what basis - if you agree with it I really don't want to know your particular spin on it. If that's all there is to it (and i'm yet to read anything to make me think it's more complicated than that) then I just wish this issue would go away - it's yet another forum for people to ramp up conspiracy theories and rabid speculation.
I don't want to hear how insensitive the danish/french etc press are - I KNOW
I don't want to hear how the press has the right to publish what it wants - I KNOW
If I spent my days going round shouting POO! and WEE! at people eventually people would start questioning my right to freedom of speech - does that constitute a major philosophical fracture in the 21st century liberal consensus? Err. No. It just means that if you have a right to something and you gratuitously abuse it some people might get upset. Big wow. It's called being a grown up.
I know how freedom of speech, religious tolerance, islamophobia, the war on terror, cartoons, and so on and so on are like, you know, really important.
But why do we have to spend most of this week and probably next talking about this cartoon issue?
The way I understood arguments/discussion/debate/general inter-human communication was that we used our energies chewing over issues the solution to which is a. controversial or b. unknown
This whole cartoon of a guy with a bomb on his head is clearly something that raises passions - I'd be a fool to deny that.
But really - I'm yet to meet a single soul who doesn't have share this one very simple view on the matter:
"Newspapers have a right to publish what they want - that's freedom of the press, but they have a responsibilty not to gratuitously offend - that's common decency. "
So what is the controversy? If anyone disagrees with that formulation I'd like to know why and on what basis - if you agree with it I really don't want to know your particular spin on it. If that's all there is to it (and i'm yet to read anything to make me think it's more complicated than that) then I just wish this issue would go away - it's yet another forum for people to ramp up conspiracy theories and rabid speculation.
I don't want to hear how insensitive the danish/french etc press are - I KNOW
I don't want to hear how the press has the right to publish what it wants - I KNOW
If I spent my days going round shouting POO! and WEE! at people eventually people would start questioning my right to freedom of speech - does that constitute a major philosophical fracture in the 21st century liberal consensus? Err. No. It just means that if you have a right to something and you gratuitously abuse it some people might get upset. Big wow. It's called being a grown up.
posted by Pickles @ 3:04 am
4 Comments:
At 5:00 am,
Neil Harding said…
It isn't quite as simple as that is it?
This debate has actually been a very good thing because it is all about the nature of what constitutes offensive.
I didn't find any of the cartoons offensive.
Were they racist? No!
The only 'dodgy' one was the turban bomb thing but it certainly didn't warrant full scale riots and death threats did it?
This is not about what Muslims found offensive, this is about the principle of free speech. The Danish Imams who toured the middle east stirring up trouble with these cartoons, had no problem with offending Muslims, they even drew 3 far more offensive ones of their own because they knew the original ones that were published were not offensive enough. Pubphilosopher has the low down on the story here.
It is the Danish Imams who should be the focus of Muslim anger, not the Danish Embassy. What 'respect' have they for Mohammed when they make their own cartoons depicting Mohammed as a paedophile and Mohammed with a pig's face?
No-one has a right not to be offended. If it wasn't these cartoons, it will be something else. Look at Theo Van Gogh's murder and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie or the ITV documentary on Saudi women being stoned that got an apology from our govt. It is always the West that is giving in to this Islamic pressure, when it is the Islamists that are committing the crimes. Eventually bullies have to be stood up, it will only get worse otherwise.
As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch Muslim MP (under death threats) says the cartoons should be published everywhere to shield those targets who were courageous enough to stand up to this bullying. 'The Arabs can't boycott goods from everywhere'.
At 11:43 am,
Pickles said…
Ok - but if we're going to spend weeks debating this surely we need to agree what we're arguing about -where do we disagree?
I's suggested that the following is a statement that would cover most reasonable people's position:
"Newspapers have a right to publish what they want - that's freedom of the press, but they have a responsibilty not to gratuitously offend - that's common decency."
Can you find fault with it?
I just think that going round in circles on this issue (and believe me I love going round in circles on issues) is actually the source of some of the problem - how do we break out of it? does every western newspaper have to publish the cartoons - thus giving the lunatics the excuse for all of the clash of civilisation nonsense they're gagging to spout? Do we have to bring in laws banning the portrayal of the prophet, thus surrendering completely on free speech? The protests will continue because there are those in the middle east who need these kinds of issues to stay in power - do we rise to it continually? do we surrender to it?
Many of the protests were over the top - but so (although there is no equivalence between publishing a cartoon and burning an embassy) was printing the cartoons again and again. It's almost as if people on both sides wanted this to kick off - as if it suits their purposes for this row to happen.
At 7:19 pm,
Anonymous said…
If I spent my days going round shouting POO! and WEE! at people eventually people would start questioning my right to freedom of speech
Well, they'd start questioning something, anyway...
At 12:10 pm,
Anonymous said…
I once stood up in front of a theatre and shouted "FIRE" really loudly.
Everyone ran out and two people died in the stampede.
When they realised it was a joke, everyone got annoyed.
When I said that I was just exercising my right to free speech, they understood completely and were fine with that. So it was all ok, really.
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