its too bad you can't blow up websites, because a terror attack on gawker would be something I could definitely get behind. i could see all the commenters scurrying away from the infernal machine like those little critters in sonic the hedgehog.

Yep, hes pretty much right. The thing, as I see it, is that the European papers felt they had to publish the pictures precisely because their society and official policy on radical Islam is usually very pliant towards the radicals. It served to make an important point.

Whereas in the US, our society and policy has usually taken the opposite tack, and because of this fact, our papers not only felt no great need to publish the pictures, but also saw it as an opportunity to stand in quasi-opposition to official policy and mainstream American belief. Its a deplorable action, and the papers should be ashamed of themselves.

Now that you have published that picture, I imagine that Osama Bin Laden will blow up the entire internet. Thanks a lot, Hamilton!

Hey, at least South Park stood up for itself.

@GhostOfDuane: Actually, there are several ways of accomplishing your goal, but please focus on more deserving targets.

There is no god but Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have been touched by His noodly appendage.

I think its more an issue of cultural appeal. There's no way Mohammed can compete with funny-pages heavyweights like Ziggy and Mary Worth.

I think if this guy sat in on one of the press's jocular bullshit sessions with their good friend George Bush, he'd understand their absolute unwillingness to offend anyone anywhere ever.

I admire the Dutch for taking their collective finger out of the dike long enough to bitchslap the American press. Well done! Resume dike-plugging.

@Mediahohoho:
Absolutely.

I am on the fence on this issue. These pictures stem from a European problem, Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Europe. The problems with dealing with Wahabism and similar sects is just not a problem we deal with on a daily basis like them.

Do they cover every snide remark or cartoon that our papers make about Mexicans? Hardly. US media didn't discuss the movie "Fitna" much either, and that was made by an actual Dutch politician, not just some crazy Swede political cartoonist.

Covering everything that pisses off the Muslim community in Europe and the Middle East could take up entire papers(and does). Our media shouldn't be blamed because we didn't print pictures of something that most Americans really wouldn't understand anyways.

On the other hand, I do think we should have printed pictures, because Europe's problems are eventually our problems(except for the awesome sex attitudes and various areas with decriminalized pot. man, i wish we had those). 9/11 showed us that we aren't invulnerable at home, people don't like us sometimes, and radical islam doesn't always gel with western society. Printing those pictures in the US could have been a way to stop burying our head in the sand.

*If you can read German, I recommend [www.spiegel.de] and they also have an English page, [www.spiegel.de]
This link should actually tell you more about this discussion [www.spiegel.de]

* printed *those* pictures

Why do we have to fight everyone else's fight for them? It's kind of like when you have a friend that talks a lot of shit they can't back up and you finally let them take one on the chin and they get mad at you for what they got themselves into.

@Priam: I tend to agree. Plus, our official government position, rather than being a full-stop support of freedom of thought, was a namby pamby, "people out to be careful not to offend others," statement that did nothing to help us and made us look like we really don't care about the things we say we care about.

@Final: interesting point.

also, is it just me or if you put orange sunglasses on that drawing, wouldn't it look just like Mary-Kate? Creepy.

@Final: Exactly. The fact that we didn't perpetuate this cartoonist's hate speech is not exactly a compelling argument. The whole controversy about that cartoon was that it was racist and incendiary. And there's no missing subtlety in it that calls for the actual publication. He's giving himself too much credit. Causing controversy isn't the same thing as making a legitimate point. It's like that stupid Post cartoonist who makes homophobic cartoons complaining about how no one is "brave" enough to run his work. The proper response is STFU, ignoramus.

Like, this isn't hard to describe. "Mohammed with a bomb on his head." There. Did anyone not get it?

The Danish paper originally ran the "draw Mohammed" contest specifically to piss off Muslims, so as far as I'm concerned, urging the NYT to follow suit is akin to the bra-heim in the A&F shirt urging me to agree that so-and-so is "such a fag," and jocularly punching me in the arm.

I mean, it's like Salon picking up some random Gawker snipe and publishing it; you know Joan Walsh is above that shit.

@FitnessMadeSimple: Danish, actually, though I’m sure many a Danish finger has plugged many a dyke.

@cassandra: Yep. It's not that the newspapers should have been barred from reprinting them, but it seems needless to take newspapers to task for electing not to further publicize his idiotic art when they wrote about the controversy, which in so many ways is not about the art itself at all.

@FitnessMadeSimple: Oh CHRIST! For the 12,000th time, the Dutch aren't Danish!
[smg.photobucket.com]

cassandra, it's more likely that the proper response to you is STFU, ignoramus. when a cartoon (a cartoon!) is used as a casus belli to murder people and provoke violent riots world wide, it is newsworthy and therefore warrants publication - on a wide scale. you may think you can mollify the muslim fanatics who want to murder you by sticking your head in the sand, but you'd be wrong. again.

@cassandra: Actually, the controversy stems from the fact that Islam forbids Mohammed from being depicted.

Cassandra -- please explain to me how the cartoon was "racist". What race is Islam?

Please explain to me why it was "incendiary", or prone to cause violence. Did a cross in a bucket of urine cause any violence?

The cartoon criticized a belief system, not a race. And criticizing Mohammad, the founder of the world's most intolerant and violent belief system, places one in alignment with everything you presumably hold dear -- human rights, tolerance, and equality.

@haguenite: Sheesh! Calm down...I know that! In the haste to make a joke, I made a silly mistake. My apologies to the homeland of Hans Christian Anderson, Lars Ulrich and Aqua. (Seriously though? You hear that mistake that often?)

@iplaudius: Indeed.

OK, "Flemming," we'll publish your lame-ass cartoons.

But only if you agree to publish something equally shitty in your "Jyllands-Posten."

I nominate The Lockhorns.

Gawker has the balls to run it! And gay Islamists everywhere must be feeling so divided about that.

@FitnessMadeSimple: Only all the time. Even some people visiting the Netherlands aren't quite sure where they are. I've had at least 8 people ask me, after I told them I was Dutch, what Denmark is like. I know the term Dutch is sort of confusing (I actually prefer Netherlandish), but it would be nice if more people got it right.

@haguenite:
Denmark. Home of Total Football.

@FitnessMadeSimple: Danish. You'll have to come up with a dairy-related metaphor.

@FitnessMadeSimple: Oh, God. There were so many comments and none of them were saying what I thought they should say so I just skimmed through them and then threw my two cents in.

A lesson learned. Forgive me.

@flankt: Why, hi there! You sure have a lot of opinions about me!

The point is not whether the cartoon should have been written about, idiot. It's whether it should have been depicted. And calling it a "causus belli," which you should one day learn to spell, is incorrect. The point of the cartoon was to provoke and insult, and provoke and insult it did.

@davidari: "The world's most intolerant and violent belief system"? Have you ever even studied comparative religion, or do you get your news from teh New York Post editorial page? Let me know again who started the Spanish Inquisition?

@cassandra: Well, you did spell it correctly. My bad. But your point is still wrong.

@haguenite: My girlfriend's Danish and I had to explain to her the American inability to separate the two, which I find hilarious. It just didn't make any sense to her. Then I explained the Swedish/Swiss problem and it just got ugly.

so, cassandra, who's the idiot? apparently you. maybe you should learn to spell. of course the images should have been depicted - they are the cause of the conflagration. as far as i can tell, our press is not bound by sharia, which means we can print pictures of mohammed. if said images upset you or anyone else, don't look at them.

@flankt: The cause of the conflagration is that some idiot with ignorant views tried to paint the founder of a religion as a terrorist, and succeeded in insulting an entire religion. The cartoon itself is secondary. Look, I'm part Jewish. What if the cartoon were of, say, Moses giving Hitler a blowjob? There wouldn't be an outcry? The point is this: if you open the door to perpetuating hate speech under the guise of "reporting," then really you are furthering the cause of hate. Editors did not print the cartoon because it was easy to describe without printing it. It's the same reason that we report on child porn without actually reprinting the images. Our newspapers decided not to print this particular cartoonist's version of "Mein Kampf." Fuck him. Maybe next time he should draw a cartoon that actually says something instead of just burning crosses on Europe's lawn. Anti-Islamicism is no more acceptable than anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism. And if you've ever read a single fucking text on comparative religion I'd be surprised. You have no idea.

And not incidentally, fuck Europe. They like to have their reputation for liberalism without actually tolerating anyone. If the French Resistance were actually the European resistance, I'd have more respect for them. Now they're just replacing the yellow "Jude" star with a yellow crescent. They're all Nazis at heart.

Cassandra --

The Spanish Inquisition was indeed started by Christians.

Though as the Inquisition took place in 1492, and no church movement has preached similar doctrine in centuries, the fight to remove that violent interpretation of Christianity is no longer a topical issue. Present day Christianity does not preach anything of the sort.

Nor did Christianity, at any moment during its violent past, mandate perpetual war against nonbelievers. Christianity has never been as inherently violent as Islam, and certainly is not in 2008.

If you wish, I will go line by line with you through the Koran, Hadith, and Sira, to explain why this is objective fact, not my interpretation. You may select the English translation of the texts to use.

You mention that Rose ignorantly "tried to paint some founder of a religion as a terrorist." Muhammed was undeniably a violent conqueror -- his most notably vicious act was his beheading of 600-900 Jewish prisoners following a battle, rather than allowing his men to ransom them. There simply is no comparative behavior by Jesus, despite what may have been done in his name.

You write "What if the cartoon were of, say, Moses giving Hitler a blowjob? There wouldn't be an outcry?" Cassandra, such images are broadcast daily from state-run television in the Middle East. They are not hard to find. The Durban conference on racism was home to thousands of such images -- again, not hard to find. Use Google.

The result of these images? Letters to the Editor. Words from heads of state. Find me so much as a black eye caused from Jewish reaction to these images.

The reaction from the Islamic world is violent and murderous, because Islam mandates that it be violent and murderous. No other religion does.

@davidari: The Pope still speaks of the Crusades, approvingly. If you believe that ALL religions did not grow by violence, you should take a look at history. The Inquisition was just one incident in the long and bloody history of the Catholic church -- up to and including, incidentally, the actual Crusades.

It is essentially ignorant to lay the blame for Muslim fundamentalists at the feet of all Muslims.You should know the effect of this kind of blanket thinking. It has been done to us for over 5,000 years. The discrimination that Europe seeks permission for against Muslims now is just one short line away from being extended to Jews. Remember when that ambassador called Israel "a shitty little country"? That is what they harbor. The Muslims are just a temporary distraction.

@cassandra: Cassandra, that is exactly the point -- you mention that I must take a look at "history". The church does not advocate that its members partake in violent conquest anymore. If I say "Al Qaeda is dangerous!", then "but so were the Bolsheviks!" is not a logical response.

Find me where, in my post, I advocated laying blame at the feet of "all Muslims." Use quotes if you wish. What I actually wrote was an attack on the belief system of Islam, not the character of individuals -- which would be bigotry. When you don't find it in my post, you can apologize for the slander.