I realize that the traditional media has dropped the cartoon mess in favor of the seaport kerfuffle. But it’s still a big deal to me and, I think, many others around the world. Plus, I have a thing for editorial cartoons and the creative geniuses who draw them. Even though I almost always disagree with their politics and their point of view, cartoonists have a way of capturing the essence of issues that mere words can never match.

And so it is again. This one really got to me…

by John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune, February 8, 2006

EclectEcon has a complete collection called “U.S. Cartoonists Fight Back.” Check it out.

Jim: Can I be a bit bitchy? The cartoons on the link are great. But none of them would have been as powerful as running the Danish cartoons that started the controversy in the first place. I’m glad the Washington Post ran an op-ed by William Bennett and Alan Dershowitz ripping the media for not running the cartoons - but I’d rather they had run the cartoons.

The way I see it, there are three moral, or at least honest, courses of action:

• 1) Publish the cartoons, concluding that no group, no matter how aggrieved or upset, can dictate what a newspaper may or may not print.
• 2) Do not publish the cartoons, and refrain from ever publishing anything offensive to Christians, Jews, or other group, because the new criteria of “sensitivity to readers/viewers” is now paramount.
• 3) Do not publish the cartoons, and admit that the reason is not “sensitivity to readers/viewers” but fear of violence to your employees and workplace.

Instead, every major newspaper except the New York Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Austin-American Statesman and the Rocky Mountain News has chosen option four: Refuse to print the cartoons, keep their readers in the dark, claim that it is out of “sensitivity to readers,” but continue to publish works like “Piss Christ” or the Virgin-Mary-in-dung painting that offends other groups that don’t object with violence. From that Bennett-Dershowitz op-ed:

So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.

So I’m glad these cartoonists are taking on the controversy. But I would rather they had used their positions to make the case for running the Danish cartoons.

Marshall: Amen! Preach on Brother Jim. Preach on.