Thursday, July 12, 2007

While you're at it....

....you might want to read this article on how W.W. Norton & Company, in publishing a book on the censorship of political cartoons (Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression). killed a cartoon....
"It wouldn't be so hypocritical if the book weren't so zealously anti-censorship. Of the 94 cartoons used by Wallis, 21 of them have religious themes. "What Would Mohammed Drive?" is described in the book, but not shown. Norton's reason? According to president Drake McFeely, "We blinked on that one, but we did not blink on the other 282 pages of cartoons." Which is no reason at all. Marlette was more acerbic in an interview with The Orlando Sentinel: "I wonder how Norton authors like Sigmund Freud, whose books were burned by the Nazis, or feminist Adrienne Rich's burqa-averse poetry would fare with the Muslim censors and Norton's editorial appeasers. Norton has no moral obligation to risk the lives of their employees to publish a cartoon, but they should acknowledge they killed the cartoon because they were frightened for their lives because of a drawing and didn't want their offices bombed.""
Amen....


The cartoon in question

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