{"id":6549,"date":"2015-01-13T20:16:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T01:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=6549"},"modified":"2015-01-13T20:16:56","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T01:16:56","slug":"sine-and-the-purported-hypocrisy-of-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=6549","title":{"rendered":"Sin\u00e9 and the purported hypocrisy of free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some commentators, like Mehdi Hasan<\/a> of the Huffington\u00a0Post, accuse the world (in Mehdi’s words “free speech fundamentalists” in particular) of hypocrisy: we are defending Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish Mohammed cartoons, yet the same Charlie Hebdo fired a well-known cartoonist seven years ago for drawing a supposedly anti-Semitic cartoon.<\/p>\n

Well, but here is the rub: he was fired<\/em>. Not murdered. Moreover, after he was fired, he\u00a0filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit and he won<\/em>. And the editor (a close friend of former French president Sarkozy, who was the target of Sin\u00e9’s supposedly anti-Semitic cartoons) lost his job.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Had Charlie Hebdo fired a cartoonist or two for drawing anti-Islamic cartoons, nobody would have cared a damn other than the cartoonists themselves and their close circle of supporters or fans. It’s not like Charlie Hebdo is a household name outside of France. Had some offended Muslims\u00a0chosen to sue Charlie Hebdo in court accusing them of hate speech, they may have won; or they may have lost; but our core\u00a0values would not have been threatened either way.<\/p>\n

The reason why we are upset is because members of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial staff (not to mention police officers, a maintenance worker, and last but not least, some Jewish shoppers halfway across town) were murdered in what was a direct, openly declared attack on one of our\u00a0fundamental values: the right to freedom of expression, even when said expression offends someone else’s beliefs.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I continue to be astonished by the cowardice of many Western media organizations when it comes to publishing tomorrow’s Charlie Hebdo cover. CNN at least were honest about it: Jeff Zucker basically said that they’re too afraid to do so.<\/p>\n

And speaking of hypocrisy, I just came across the illustrated transcript<\/a> of Rush Limbaugh’s rant concerning CNN’s decision. A well illustrated transcript; it even has a stock image of some child on a sled. But, predictably, no Hebdo cover. To see the actual cover, you have to follow a link to another news organization’s Web site.<\/p>\n

Congrats, Rush, for showing us just what a\u00a0brave and proudly courageous American you really are.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some commentators, like Mehdi Hasan of the Huffington\u00a0Post, accuse the world (in Mehdi’s words “free speech fundamentalists” in particular) of hypocrisy: we are defending Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish Mohammed cartoons, yet the same Charlie Hebdo fired a well-known cartoonist seven years ago for drawing a supposedly anti-Semitic cartoon. Well, but here is the rub: […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,5,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-politics","category-religion","category-54-id","category-5-id","category-38-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6549"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6560,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6549\/revisions\/6560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}