Friday, February 24, 2006
ATTACK ONLY THE SAFE TARGETS
British cartoonists reflect on their courage and decency:
When the political cartoonist Martin Rowson draws President Bush with blood on his hands, he gets hundreds of angry and obscene e-mails. But he doesn’t mind, he said, because “the purpose of satire is to attack people more powerful than you are."
Still, Rowson said, he would not have drawn the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that were published by a Danish newspaper and led to often violent protests around the world. Rowson said the cartoons insulted a minority group—“poor and powerless Muslims in Denmark."
If the purpose of satire is to attack people more powerful than you are, attack the Prophet Muhammad! He’s way more powerful than George W. Bush. How dare you insult him! Interesting that Rowson, who works for a British paper, is so keen to avoid offending Muslims in Denmark.
Steve Bell, who, like Rowson, draws mainly for the Guardian newspaper ... [recently] drew an excited Bush having relations with a camel, which was supposed to symbolize Iraq.
But even as a believer in harsh political satire, Bell said, he would not have drawn the Danish cartoons, including one that featured Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. He defended the Danish newspaper’s right to publish the drawings, saying limitations on free speech should be “self-imposed."
"The limits are one’s own integrity and one’s own beliefs,” he said. “Sometimes you want to offend. But you target the powerful, not the weak."
The Prophet won’t be happy about all these infidels mocking his weakness. Hey, Prophet! You’re so lame that Brit cartoonists won’t draw you!
[Hunt ]Emerson also said he would not have published the Muhammad cartoons, partly because they were “not very good” and partly out of fear of violent reprisals. “As a cartoonist, I have quite a few views about it,” he said. “But as a human being, I’m not going to put me and my family in danger. So you might say they’re winning."
Yes. Yes, you might say that.