To justify its decision further, the publisher noted that curious readers could easily view the cartoons online. Here, at least, Klausen is clearly at odds with her publisher. In the text, she warns readers that “the longevity of such sites is unpredictable and they are often marred by obscene commentary and misleading translations of the Danish captions.”
In any case, it is important to understand the context in which the author, a professional scholar, proposed to publish the drawings. Yale had the opportunity to reprint the images accurately, with precise translations, under the aegis of one of the world’s foremost universities. And there was in fact a precedent: in 2006, Harper’s ran the twelve cartoons with an accompanying essay by Art Spiegelman, who wrote that “these now infamous and banal Danish cartoons need actually to be seen to be understood.”
That is the fundamental argument the press chose not to heed. Klausen has still written an important, thorough history of the Danish cartoon controversy, based on sound scholarship. It is unfortunate that her publisher prevented it from being a comprehensive one.
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I got a problem with this: "The outrage spread quickly"
As i remember(!) there wasnt any 'outrage' immediately after the publication, only a few months later, when a danish muslim politician made a controversy from it to boost he's own interests. And i dont buy that there was widespread popular outcry in muslim coutries - the protests should have benn much bigger if muslims really cared that much about it, and i only remember big protests in syria, where it was politically motivated and organized.
A still remember a bbcworld report from pakistan covering a protest against the cartoons, which seemed pretty serious (they threw a parkbench through a shop window) and the anchor asked the correspondent how seroius the situation was, and he said that "in this country it's not a big protest at all" and most ppl dont really care.
i muslims really really was offended there's should have been protest with millions of musloim marching in the streets in every country
(or my memory playing tricks with me - and dont have the time to check it - someone pls dicover the "memory ray"
#1 Posted by ip, CJR on Thu 3 Dec 2009 at 06:01 AM
The "free speech" justification for the publication of these cartoons really misses the point.
There is no free speech protection for offensive images. Cartoons that offend what we value - our commercial property rights - are censored all the time in the US. See the cases of Disney v. Powell, 897 F.2d 565 and Disney v. Air Pirates, 581 F.2d 751, where the federal courts promptly, repeatedly and throughly enjoined the publication of "offensive" images of Mickey Mouse and friends and fined their creators. You can't be too funny with Mickey in our culture.
The issue with this controversy, now about 4 years old, is how long it's going to take one culture to stop insisting it has the bogus "right" to offend another culture's values.
#2 Posted by jgm, CJR on Thu 3 Dec 2009 at 08:41 PM