Reprinting lousy drawings
just doesn’t make good sense
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
I WAS SORT of disappointed at Kathleen Parker’s take on the whole Danish cartoon/Islamic riots thing (see facing page) — not because I felt strongly about it one way or the other, but because it seemed so unlike her.
When I received the column from her syndicate, it was only the second expression of that particular sentiment I had seen since this craziness started (I’ve seen others since). The first came
from sometime radio host Michael Graham. That did not surprise me; it was just like him.
But I’ve had the opportunity in the past to speak with Kathleen about the philosophy that underlies her writing. On each occasion, I have appreciated (and identified with) the fact that although she is commonly labeled “conservative,” in fact that she does not think of herself as liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. She describes her outlook as simply a matter of “being a grownup.” It’s my belief that her writing is generally consistent with that, which is why I like to read her.
That’s why I was disappointed to see her saying, essentially, that we editors should republish these cartoons because we can, because we are free and (by implication) because “they” don’t want us to. Or, to put it another way, to prove we are not “sensitive.”
That hardly seems like the grown-up response. It’s more like the eternal cry of the adolescent.
I choose not to republish those lousy cartoons. And they are lousy, by the way — typically European, most are by U.S. standards not even fully developed cartoons. They are lame illustrations, the kind a page designer might drop into a page just to break up the gray text.
When I run cartoons on this issue, they’re going to be good ones with a point, such as the seven we’ve run in the past week from our own Robert Ariail and others.
While I defend the right of those Danes to publish what they wanted, their decision to undertake the project was childish. Seriously, what grownup goes out of his way to mock anyone’s religion? And what did it accomplish? It put the rest of the West in the position of having to defend an immature editorial decision in the face of the even more infantile reaction of the kinds of lunatics who are all too common in Islamic circles. Personally, I’d rather defend something nobler than that.
I mean, if they wanted to decry the fact that Europeans were wusses about Islamist madness and show they weren’t going to be a part of that, why not criticize Islamist actions, rather than mocking the religion? There’s plenty to say within that arena — things worth saying.
And there would be nothing “fine” about cartoons mocking the Holocaust. As for “Piss Christ” and the like, my own personal reaction is that such “art” provides a good argument for reviving the Inquisition. (Maybe we can manage that now that we papists have taken over the Supreme Court.)
Anyway, I choose not to publish the lousy drawings. I take the grown-up perspective: I am free to publish them, but I’m even freer than that, which means I am free not to publish them. I do not feel
constrained by any need to prove I’m man enough to cock a snook at a bunch of pathetic idiots running around screaming in foreign cities. Nor do I feel the need to be “sensitive.” I do feel a need to be pragmatic and strategic, as someone who deeply wants my country to prevail in this war on terror.
That’s why I have written in the past that while people in the United States who loudly protest the war in Iraq have every right to do so, they need to be grown-up enough to recognize the consequences: They encourage terrorists and Baathists in Iraq to keep killing Americans (and Iraqis), because our enemies assume (with reason) that if they inflict just a few more casualties, we will cave. Protesters have the right to express themselves, but in the real world of cause and effect, they are encouraging the enemy.
It’s also why we said the president should have ditched Donald rumsfeld
after Abu Ghraib, even if one can’t draw a direct line of responsibility to him. Only a gesture such as that would have shown the world — and the people of Iraq, our proteges in the project of democracy — how seriously we take these things that happened on his watch. Showing that we stand firmly behind the ideals we espouse is far more important strategically than Rummy keeping his job. In fact, if he were replaced by someone who believed in sending over enough troops to get the job done to start with, we’d probably be better off.
(All of this follows the same reasoning we use when adults tell their teenage daughters not to go out dressed like that. Girls may see doing so as their right, but grownups know that, the world being unfair, exercising that “right” would make them more likely to draw the attention of evil men who would do them harm.)
The unifying principle in all these cases (except the parenthetical)? I want us to win the war.
Am I saying newspapers in the U.S. shouldn’t publish the cartoons because we don’t want to offend a bunch of idiots in the Arab street? No. I’m saying I see no sensible reason to do so.
Not to cast aspersions, but those people over there are nuts. They’ve been nuts for as long as I 
can remember. One could provide all sorts of excuses for them if one were inclined to be “sensitive” — they are traumatized by alienation, by poverty, by propaganda, by an inferiority complex at their once-proud culture becoming subordinate to the West in so many ways — but hey, nuts is nuts. There’s absolutely no excuse for reacting violently to a few stupid drawings. But republishing them just to show we can is no way to lead them to sanity.
If you actually haven’t seen them, and want to, you can easily find them on the Web. If you do, I predict you’ll be sorry that you wasted the time.
Related Posts
Brad, Every nation in the world has nuts and idiots. US included. The other problem is that in the Islamic world, the nutcases may be in the majority. The problem is when the nuts take over the government – re: Iran for one. Hamas leadership, for another. The worse problem would be for the rest of the world to appease the nutcases in the course of their nutty endeavors. That is what happened when another nut, Adolf Hitler, was given the respect of a leader of an important nation state by many appeasers in the US government and the leading media of the times, i.e The New York Times, among others.
The Bush administration has launched the War on Terror specifically to defeat the fanatics you refer to in your article. That WOT cannot be won without a steadfast resolve and persistence by our ENTIRE nation. A sad statistic is that 40% of the Democratic party do not support this WOT. These are the appeasers of our times. To be fair, the Republicans have their appeasers too, albeit a much smaller group. Thankfully, for the moment, they are not leading this nation.
I too enjoy Parker’s columns as a media voice of reason most of the time. As silly as this cartoon tragedy is, especially in light of the fact that an Egyptian paper published these same cartoons a couple of years ago, with no outrage then, I think Parker is making the point that any appeasement to these people is wrong. Once these cartoons became the news du jour, I think every western paper should have printed them. After all, were not the Abu Graib photos published by nearly every paper?
Brad, this is mostly an excellent column, containing a perspective I find has been sadly missing from most discussion about this cartoon matter. Thank you for that.
Again, though, as one who opposed the Iraq invasion, I have to take exception to the lecture about being “grown-up” enough to recognize the consequences of my position. Your logic (shared by many, I admit) has a glaring flaw.
Let’s pretend the US decides, more or less unilaterally, to invade Bolivia tomorrow (or pick any country you want). Over time, as we continue to occupy the country, Bolivian guerrillas (let’s even say some from radical religious sects and perhaps embracing unsavory political positions) start to kill American troops, and in the process, Bolivian civilians are also killed. The bloodshed goes on, the death toll slowly rises. Many in America say we must leave Bolivia, that it was a dumb idea in the first place to invade the country. But other editorial columnists, such as one in Columbia SC, say, no, we cannot protest the war in Bolivia, because doing so sends the message to those Bolivian guerrillas that if they keep killing American troops, we’ll eventually cave in, so they should keep it up.
Wrong conclusion! We should leave Bolivia because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of what message the Bolivian guerrillas might think they’re getting. Do you honestly think, Brad, that if polls over the next year showed American popular support for our Iraq presence growing, not shrinking, that American troops would stop getting killed by roadside bombs more or less as they are now?
Talk about “cocking a snook!” And if we are going to start talking about people needing to be “grown-up enough to recognize the consequences,” then the discussion needs to begin and end with that most spectacularly adolescent (think “smirk”) of American Presidents, George W. Bush. Has there ever been an admistration that has grasped the consequences of its actions more poorly than this one?
I have to completely agree with Ms. Parker. This issue is about freedom of the press. To see American newspapers shrink from confronting this issue is the ultimate in hypocrisy and to me, is most disturbing. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.”
My ox has certainly been gored on a number of occasions and I have survived and been the better for it. Now, we find we must be “sensitive” to other cultures. Since when? Since these “nuts” present an overt threat to the news media? I havbe never known that to stop the media before.
The cartoons should be published because this is a major news story, of great interest to many people. I would like a convenient place to view them and then decide their merits objectively for myself. Sadly, that won’t happen with my newspaper. I am astonished at your position.
Yeah – right. It’s news so of course why would The State choose to publish anything like that.
Excuse me, but I continue to be confused on this point: Do we have two “Daves” here? And if so, could you guys get together and settle on a way to differentiate yourselves to avoid confusion for the rest of us?
OK. I am new to this Blog, so I will defer to the first Dave. I do not want my views to be confused with his.
Dave Hammond – Thanks, I had already changed my name once…
Phillip – Whether we like it or not we are THE world’s superpower. If we ignore human rights abuse and genocide, then we may eventually have a lot to answer for with our creator. I guess atheists don’t worry about such things. But back to Bolivia, expanding on your red herring, let’s say there had been gassing and murder of ethnic Bolivian Indians, the UN had been enlisted, and 17 resolutions had been issued to the Bolivian government to stop. Also, the Bolivian military had been firing on US aircraft in a “treaty agreed to and signed” no fly zone. Given these criteria, are you still cutting and running from Bolivia?
I agree with Dave and NotVeryBright.
The cartoons are news.
Reasonable people have to wonder whether there are any real journalists left at The State.
If what I am hearing from people who know the Muslim world well is true, then what is happening is only the tip of the iceberg. Islam is very much afraid and threatened; if it weren’t the cartoons, it would and will be something else.
A significant part, though probably still only a smaller part, of this fear is a reaction to the perceived threat to Islamic culture by Western values, represented especially by Hollywood. In this, I side pretty much with the Muslims. Evangelicals (and I think more conservative Roman Catholics — didn’t Brad write something about needing a “sense of shame” not too long ago?) are also disturbed by many trends in our increasing culture of adolescence.
I’ve gone back and forth on this in my own mind, but at the moment, I think I am with Brad on this one. Here is another case in which we need to avoid the culture of adolescence.
Overall, however, we are probably at the beginning of what may well prove to be another Thirty Years War, only I expect that it will be much longer this time. At the beginning of that conflict, the question was whether the Western world would be Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, or Radical Reformed, but it soon degenerated into greed and pride. In a way, the issue has never been solved. It may be this time around. It may well force a reconsideration of our values. Most informed observers of the scene say that it will be a very costly process. I personally wish that our leaders would recognize this better.
Brad must read a different “Kathleen Parker” than I do.
The “Kathleen Parker” published in The State is a rightwing hack.
I wonder where Brad reads the other one.
Why replace Rumsfeld with someone competent?
It would make the rest of the Bush Administration look bad.
Wait! I hear that “Brownie” is available. He’d fit right in.
Brad –
You asked the question “why publish the pictures,” then answered with the reasons why NOT to publish the pictures. As a journalist myself, I think you missed them most important reason, because it is news.
When you start applying a moral test to reporting news, you are no longer objective. You should publish the pictures because they are news, and The State readers should be allowed to make the judgement for themselves about the pictures. By not publishing them, you are saying to readers, “trust me, I will interpret events for you.”
This is an untenable position for a newsperson.
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that originally published the offensive cartoons, has an editorial today entitled “Man pisser på os”. (For those who do not read Danish too well, there’s a rough translation of the entire editorial here.)
Whether you consider this piece to be a rant or the voice of one crying out in the desert, the writer, Per Nyholm, does point the different perspective of the press in a small nation in Europe:
But he does make an important point about “but,” ”A sneaky word. It’s used to deny or relativize what one has just said.”
There’s a lot more that I can’t reproduce here. Somehow I doubt that we’ll see an editorial with this colorful, evocative language locally anytime soon.
Mike C., The Danes have a lot to be P.O.’d about. This seemingly new wave of Islamofacism isn’t really new at all. It has been there since moe-ham-idiot founded this evil cult of a so called religion. The problem always was it is hard to attack the free people of the western world when all you have is a camel for transportation. Open air travel has provided the opportunity for this Muslim virus to spread worldwide and we all know they aren’t broke any more with all the oil money from the Saudis and Iranians and others funding their hatred. Someone smarter and with a lot more time than I compiled a list of their evil aggressions over the last twenty to thirty years from the Olympic Munich massacre of athletes to the Beirut slaughter of US Marines, suicide bombings, Russian schoolchildren massacre, 93 WTC, Mogadishu, and the 9-11 and British July masssacres. Religion of Peace my you know what. We all need to be P.O.’d.
Dave–your earlier response to me proves my point exactly in regards to Brad’s logical fallacy. If a war is justified, then one must argue in favor of it on those grounds, as you do. No problem. And if somebody opposes the war, then you (or Brad) must oppose the opposers by saying, “No, you’re wrong, the war is just and so we must be there.”
However, it’s a logical nonstarter to make an issue of the fact that domestic opposition to a war encourages the enemy, because that will almost always be the case anyway, whether or not the original war or continued occupation is justified. My point about the hypothetical “Bolivian invasion” is that, according to this “comforting the enemy” logic, once we are in a war or occupying a country, we have to stay regardless of the original morality or even good sense of entering the war in the first place. That’s how we ended up with 50,000 dead in Vietnam, for some twisted sense of “honor,” when things probably would have ended up more or less the same had we left 5, 6, or 7 years earlier.
So yes, Dave, tell me I’m wrong about Iraq because it was right to fight there. I may disagree with you but I respect the legitimacy of that argument.
Thanks for a decent headline on the Cheney thing this morning, Brad. AOL, in true Time-Warner fashion, is running, “Cheney shoots fellow hunter.” Ideologies become apparent when reporting on a hunting accident.
Herb:
From NRO’s Corner (these are from a conservative!):
Canada’s Globe and Mail reports today:
But publishing such material is, er, un-Canadian.
Globe and Mail cited the New York Times in its decision not to print the cartoons:
Meanwhile, the publisher from Canada’s wild west complains about the support he’s not getting.
First they came for the cartoonists.
In other news, former VP Al Gore — he has not shot anyone — is helpfully mending relations with the Saudis
There’s no word on how any of this is playing out in Mexico.
Herb,
WE’RE AT WAR,&trade y’know. Only a traitorous press would have reported this incident.
Since they’ve gone and blown the whistle on Cheney’s infallibility then the terrorists have won.
Seriously, “Cheney gently spritzes errant hunter with pellets” would have been the ideologically correct headline.
I received the following e-mail from a reader, and rather than respond just to him, I thought I’d post both his message and my response for all to see. Here’s his:
And here is my response:
Perhaps I should add a couple of points. First, I don’t recall saying the drawings were "offensive," certainly not in any objective sense. At least, they weren’t to me; to me they were boring (but then, I’m not a Muslim). What we decided was that there was little point in going to the trouble of running the drawings (and there would be some trouble involved; I doubt the Danish paper would mind us republishing them, but I can’t take that for granted, and to my knowledge, the images have not moved on any service to which we have clear rights). Running them would cause us no problems, of course, since it’s highly doubtful any violent Muslim extremists read The State. (It’s amusing that some critics accuse us, directly or by implication, of being afraid to run the drawings. Afraid of what?) For us, NOT running them is far more likely to tick off readers than running them; hence my column to explain. Apparently, I didn’t do a very good job in Mr. Ballentine’s case, since he still misunderstands the reasoning as being about "offensiveness."
To explain again, our nation is investing considerable blood and treasure in trying to bring about a more friendly Mideast. I chose not to repeat the foolish gesture of a Danish editor, who seems to have gone out of his way to induce even more people in the region to hate the West. I’m not going to be a part of that. As I noted, folks over there are nuts. Why try to make them more nuts?
Oh, and why does this drive them nuts? Because a lot of Muslims believe it is inherently blasphemous to create an image of the Prophet, even a respectful one. Interestingly, Christians and Jews are supposed to believe something very similar to that (although we Catholics departed from that a long time ago). So if our country’s trying to win hearts and minds — and Americans are dying in that effort — why do it?
Another point: I expect Mr. Ballentine to form his own opinions. He should expect me to do the same, and to publish them. I’m not the editor over the news pages; I’m the editor of the opinion pages. I certainly hope no one thinks my opinion has anything to do with what the news department does or doesn’t do. It doesn’t. We are separate divisions, and cannot make decisions for each other. The newspaper is set up that way on purpose.
Whoa. See how long it takes me to respond to one person? I’ll have to get to the rest of y’all later.
Brad –
I am a journalist, like you. Take a look at the post I did earlier from an associate’s point of view. I would hope that the main criteria on which words you put in The State are those that are the most newsworthy, and not because of some other subjective criteria.
The fact that this story has made front page news, been on the network television news and in news magazines for weeks now, to me, is justification enough to warrant a consideration in The State. I am sure you could get clearance to reprint them, if you wanted.
Gene Retske
Interesting. I suppose with these cartoons we really have another instance where something may be understandable in terms of our values, but doesn’t work very well in terms of human relations. Or to put it theologically, we have another instance of how Luther’s teaching of the two realms applies in practice. What may be good for the American people (or at least American journalism) isn’t necessarily helpful for cultivating friendships (and I don’t mean the Al Gore kind that Mike mentioned). For what it’s worth, I still side with Brad.
Herb –
I think you are missing the point. The purpose of a NEWSpaper is to report the news. There is a legitmate place where editorializing takes place, and that is the Editorial page. When the media reports the news, they are supposed to report in an unbiased, objective manner. What I think Brad is doing is editing the news to conform to a political standard. That is the definition of “bias”, and is being largely ignored by the media today. There is nothing in the images that are offensive to community standards in The State’s service area, so publish them, and don’t slant the news.
There may be many editorial decisions made during the course of a year. I do not recall another instance where you or any of the other editorial staff have written a pre-emptive column justifying not writing about them. If you are not going to write about it, why go to the trouble of telling us why or why not? Your whole argument goes against everything I thought I knew about journalism. And to me, this is about journalism and preservation of our values. Not making friends. As you say, if they aren’t even reading your paper, what is the problem?
I guess I am just glad then that some people don’t always have to do what a lot of people expect them to do. It just makes it easier on those of us who have Muslim friends in the local area. But I’m not sure what the problem is with you guys, because the news services are constantly picking and choosing what they are going to show anyway, so they are always leaving out something newsworthy (and putting in stuff that isn’t, in my opinion, but that’s another matter).
Anyway, I think one of the cartoons is well done (the one with the suicide bombers marching up into Paradise) and funny. The rest are pretty stupid.
If you are in to this kind of thing, you’ll have a riot at this website, but don’t tell my Muslim friends I told you to go there. The stuff in it is all out of the Hadith, by the way.
Well, I guess my response was indeed too long, as several people seem not to have read to the end of it. Y’all keep saying things such as:
That would seem to agree completely with what I just said. To repeat:
There’s a world of difference between news and editorial, folks. Never forget that what I write is opinion.
Brad –
I did read all of it, but it appears bit inconsistent to me with what you said in Sunday’s editorial. “I choose not to republish those lousy cartoons.”
What did this mean, if not that you had made the decision, or at least concurred in it? Are you speaking for The State in your editorial, or not? If not, then why leave the impression that The State choose not to publish them?
-gene
No, I am not speaking for The State as an institution.
I regularly use “we” in columns. When I do, I’m referring to the editorial board — the folks responsible for the editorial pages. That’s all I can speak for, because of the strict separation between news and editorial. I don’t participate in their decisions; they don’t participate in ours. Note the difference in pronouns.
I explain that in columns and on my blog frequently, but I can’t go through all that every time I say “we” in the paper, or I wouldn’t have time or space to say the other things I have to say. (As with most of my columns, this one had to be cut to fit.)
On the blog, I have all the room in the world, so I go into these wordy explanations more frequently. But in the paper, over time you have to assume that most of your readers read you within the context of the rest of your work.
That generally works on the editorial page — our readers tend to be regulars. When I am misunderstood, it is usually by somebody who read my words in isolation on-line, and doesn’t read the paper (or at least, doesn’t read it regularly, which with the editorial page, can almost mean the same thing; given our limited space, almost everything we say builds on something we’ve said previously).
Hmmmm. I don’t thinks it’s a coincidence that “when drab art“ and “brawn hatred” are anagrams of “Brad Warthen.”
I make a rock.
After checking around a bit, I’m glad I sided with Brad (though I’m sorry that I can’t complain to him about news items in The State). I think the bottom line is that journalists don’t want to risk losing readers, or become a story themselves, and I can’t blame them for either of those.
It seems to me some people are trying to make something out of nothing, but that is par for the course on this blog half the time.
Sorry, that last sentence was too sarcastic. I have to say that I learn a lot here. Not from everybody, but then Texans are a little dense, anyway.
Brad says that he wouldn’t print the cartoons because they serve no purpose other than mocking the religion of Islam. Brad states “why not criticize Islamist actions, rather than mocking the religion?” I’ve only seen one of the cartoons, but that’s exactly what that cartoon was doing. The prophet with a bomb in his turban IS criticizing Islamist actions. It is criticizing the murders they commit in the name of their religion. I’m not sure how Brad could miss that point. The cartoons are news and should be published for that purpose. They don’t have to be on the front page of the paper, but I, as a reader, should be allowed to see what it is that is causing world wide rioting by fanatics.
The cartoons not only criticize Islamist actions, they also mock the religion. They do both things. The question is, does a person want to do both? You can do it to Christians, because Christians don’t riot (they are a riot sometimes, I will admit). Even in the Columbia area, there would be plenty of ill will if the cartoons were published in The State.
Bill Smith called him out.
http://www.idontbelievethestate.com/2006/02/brad-warthen-appeaser_15.html
Hmmm. Dozens more dead, Christians attacked and killed, churches burned. It seems to be getting worse. Are you still sure we should just remain quiet and above the fray? I guess if they show enough hate and violence then they’ll get their way And they will, because after this I’m sure no one in the press will print anything if there’s even the slightest hint that Moslems might not like it. Like I said before, I recognizing bullying, and I recognize submission.
You can write down your rights all you wish. You can recite the First Amendment until you’re blue in the face. But rights don’t exist if, out of fear, you won’t exercise them. Let’s not let our common rights get in the way of their Sharia. That’s a good Dhimmi.
I know you’re the opinion editor, but after reading all the comments above, it seems pretty clear that lots of your readers really do want this reported as news, and they feel the cartoons are part of the story.
Hey, what if I drew a political cartoon of Mohammad! Would you print it?