Thud pointed out an interesting piece via email by August Pollak regarding Malkin’s “selective memory.” Several points taken.
But…there’s always one of those…
Pollak writes,
Are the cartoons freedom of speech? Well, yeah. Of course you have the right to print shitty, racist cartoons that serve no purpose but to inflame Arab sentiment and make racist right-wingers feel good about themselves.
“Inflame Arab sentiment?” It’s done a great deal more than that.
Yet I can be extremely angry and yet keep my urge for violence in check.
If I piss someone off and get hit, even if I deliberately tried to piss the person off, he’s still responsible for his actions. No matter what I said.
Self-control.
Same applies here.
Pollak accuses Malkin of being a racist. I don’t really follow Malkin’s commentary — scratch that. I don’t follow it at all. Maybe she is a racist. Maybe she isn’t. The “right-wing” part of the epithet is true enough.
Still, does that somehow disqualify what the pictures (which she’s simply assembled from various web sites) tell us about the reaction of a fairly significant portion of Muslims? Sure, the tag, “No, you go to hell,” is a little silly — but I do think the pictures speak for themselves. Am I saying all Muslims are reacting irrationally violently? No — I am only privy to what the media presents to me.
Still, while purposely insulting someone is immoral, wanting to behead someone because of it is on quite another level.
I’m not sure what your bar is for racist, but she kinda leapt over most people’s when she wrote a book defending the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, and encouraged the wholesale internment of Muslims. She’s also one of the loudest, exclusionary voices in the “liberals are traitors” camp; and she generally means that in the “they should be rounded up and jailed” category. It might be fun to look into her a bit more deeply.
Um, yes, I would consider that racist. And she might well be using the Muslim reaction now as further proof that all Muslims should be jailed…
Still, the sad irony of the London pictures speak for themselves—calling for the beheading of anyone who insults Muslims is a far cry from insulting cartoons.
Were they in turn trying to be provocative? Probably. But there’s one thing missing—the violent Danish response.
Re: “It might be fun to look into her a bit more deeply.” Perhaps I’ll wander around her site some.