If you've been looking at the news or surfing the web this morning, you've probably seen the latest Liberal Outrage. Several papers chose not to run two Opus cartoons that had jokes about radical Islam. You can see it in the "mainstream" press here, and in right-wing Blogovia here, and if you look around, you'll see it all over, no doubt. You can find the cartoons here.

Now, I can't see why these cartoons would be so inflammatory, but then again I also don't care that Salman Rushdie was knighted. I would have allowed the cartoons to run if I edited a newspaper. But that isn't the point.

Everywhere you look, the editors who pulled the cartoons are being called "cowards" and "spineless." I've seen people complaining about censorship, and how we don't need the government to do that for us because we'll do it to ourselves. There is plenty, also, about hypocrisy, because last week's Opus about Falwell  was published. Of course, I've seen the inevitable comments about how these editors are afraid to "take a stand."

This reminds me very much of the to-do about the Dixie Chicks a few years ago. They stood onstage somewhere in England and told the audience that they were ashamed that President Bush was from their home state of Texas.

Bam! They were off radio stations all over the country. Bam! They were out of record stores, too. Bam! Concerts were cancelled in some areas due to low ticket sales. Their careers eventually recovered - when some righties started opening their eyes and remembering that there is indeed a U.S Constitution - but they had a couple of rough years because of it. And whenever someone said anything about the right to free speech or censorship, many Righties provided this answer:

"What censorship? The government didn't say they can't be played! The government didn't cancel their shows! The government didn't take their CDs off the racks! These are privately owned radio stations and record stores, and if they don't want to play what these traitors (yes, they were called that) sing then that is their RIGHT. Don't YOU believe in freedom?"

Well, how is this any different?

Aren't these newspapers private companies? Do they not have the right to make their own editorial decisions, especially when we're talking not about a news story, but a comic strip? Are they obligated to print what righties want them to, as if they were all owned by Murdoch? Of course they aren't. So is the right willing to take a stand for the freedom of individual companies to make their own decisions about their own product? It seems that a lot of people are willing to take the stand in some instances, but not others. And that isn't taking a stand at all, is it?

It's understandable why these editors made this choice, as well, although I'll say once again that I disagree with it. The address of the editorial offices is plainly printed in each copy of the paper, and some folks have an allergy to being blown to little, tiny bits. It's fear. It's the same fear that makes people create stupid excuses for a war that anyone honest can see was wrong from the beginning. It's the same fear that makes people eager to give up their freedoms - the same ones they say the soldiers are fighting for - for a promise of security that this administration has not even tried to give them. It's a fear of being blown to smithereens by radical muslims, and the Left is far from being alone in feeling that. Fear of muslims has, in fact, influenced the Republican platform more than anything else since 2001. Fear of muslims is why Bush got a second term. Fear of muslims is why we suddenly don't need warrants to listen to private conversatons, and also why that isn't exactly what the KGB used to do. For a conservative blogger to say that this fear is cowardly is the ultimate in hypocrisy, unless that blogger is insulting Islam with their own name and address printed clearly on his blog every time. And those would be few and far between, wouldn't they?

And why is the Falwell thing equated with this? Do his followers kill people for any percieved insult? More to the point, does he speak for all Christians? The unpublished cartoons made a statement (a weak one, albeit) about ALL of Islam, not one cleric. The Falwell cartoon spoke of one person only, but just like when he died people are happily pretending that any criticism of Falwell is a criticism of Christianity as a whole.

Well, I was raised Catholic, so he didn't speak for me. In fact, he didn't have much that was nice to say about Catholics. He said, as I recall "If you're not a Born-Again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." In other words, if you didn't belong to HIS denomination, you weren't a Christian at all. That didn't speak for Catholics, or Methodists, or Lutherans, or Mormons, or Episcopalians, or anyone that isn't a born-again, Baptist, racist segregationist that wants to destroy the Constitution and the government as it stands and replace it with a theocracy based on their beliefs.

So, how is a joke about him being in Heaven with a whole list of fellow Americans that he never missed a chance to denigrate during his life an insult to all of Christianity? If Christians of most denominations want to see insults to their beliefs, a great place to look would be a list of Jerry Falwell quotes. Here's one.

But, please, righties, feel free to continue to make a fuss about this. I'm not the only one who remembers the Dixie Chicks, I'm sure, so keep showing folks how your opinion wavers and how you consider a cartoon to be more important than the fact that the soldiers are fighting for a government that took the whole month off. Keep showing folks that this is more important than security, liberty, health care, and jobs continuing to march overseas. Please keep showing us how all you big, strong warriors who happen to be at home while others fight and die to alleviate YOUR fear are "taking a stand", albeit a completely different stand than you took a few years ago in a similar situation.

Please keep showing us this at least until November of next year. Those of us who actually care about America more than our own fear would appreciate that.