Where's Bill Hicks when you need him

furrypedro · Post by **furrypedro** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 10:28 am

so I opened up the paper today and saw a photograph of a group of people (religious persuasion not pictured) Protesting (as in expressing themselves....freely) AGAINST Freedom of expression. You've seen them I'm sure, they were holding signs that said "Freedom of expression can go to hell"; and that previous sentence is the only thing I've ever written where I've felt the need to emphasise and underline EVERY SINGLE WORD.

I'm sure all of us would have loved to be the one standing at the Danish embassy saying "Guys, I have the perfect way for you to demonstrate you distaste with the concept of free speech.......you ready???? Shut the fuck up."

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:02 am

Was there any more information in the paper than that? Becase while I think that freedom of expression is great, I think that people who play the freedom of expression card at every opportunity are ginormous assholes, and I can understand being tired of people who think that anything and everything should be protected as a freedom of expression issue. Nowadays, people get all uppity if they are asked to turn their t-shirt inside out. Someone hears about it and says "This is America*, and I thought we had freedom of speech and stuff!" and people get all pissy and indignant. About the "freedom" to express yourself through a tshirt in a nonpublic space. It's so petty.

*I see you're from the UK, but I'd imagine there's a similar mentality over there

furrypedro · Post by **furrypedro** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 1:08 pm

The deal is (as far as my sources have let on) this Danish newspaper published a load of cartoons by it's readership, some of which depicted the prophet Mohammed in a less than glorious light. I hear one had him wearing a nuke like a turban.

In the context of our times this could be seen as rash, maybe even childish, possibly funny or even witty. I haven't seen the offending cartoons with my own eyes but the thing is that while us in the west take them with a grain of salt, many (Muslims in particular) do not.

In my ignorance I don't see how this affects the way they live their life, but I do see the people in question not turning the other cheek, so to speak. So someone took the piss again, big deal; what these people seem to be missing is that by renouncing free expression they are renouncing the very thing that allows them to practice their religion in peace.

As for the cartoons, by rising above it they can show the publishers to be petty and small minded and themselves to have strength of character. As it is they show themselves to be (regardless of the point they try to make) unable to appreciate 1)humour - tasteless or otherwise 2)Irony 3)Hypocrisy.

I have nothing more to say on this specific matter, but I did laugh my arse off.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:02 pm

how about pentagon getting all pissy about this cartoon

people need to lighten up. this is a war! i mean, it's not like anybody died. we can still laugh.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:09 pm

Are the cartoons that offensive to me personally? No
Can I see why they would offend some people? Yes
Should a newspaper editor be able to have the same foresight as me? Yes
Should a newspaper editor use potential backlash as the only metric by which he decides whether to run a piece? No
Is this a case where the benefits of running the piece outweigh the potential backlash? No

And that's the bottom line for me. We can talk about freedoms all day long, but we also need to talk about responsibility. Is a newspaper that prints unspecific negative cartoons about Islam acting within its rights? Probably, depending on the country. Are they acting responsibly? No, they're printing hate pictures just to flesh out a story about how some lazy writer can't find an illustrator. That's lame.

Reimagine the story if a newspaper editor called for people to draw illustrations of Korean people, and then printed some about how Koreans are cheap, loud, own grocery stores and hate black people. And then tried to hide behind "freedom of expression" instead of just saying "Sorry that we fucked up".

I don't think these people are protesting "freedom of expression". They're protesting people who think freedom of expression means "having carte blanche to be an unwarranted, unapologetic jackass."

furrypedro · Post by **furrypedro** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:15 pm

erikb wrote:I don't think these people are protesting "freedom of expression". They're protesting people who think freedom of expression means "having carte blanche to be an unwarranted, unapologetic jackass."

good point, I hadn't considered that.

I'm gonna go read it again

Where's Bill Hicks when you need him

Where IS Bill Hicks when you need him?

Where's Bill Hicks when you need him