My heroes

I haven't written about the Muslim cartoon thing, because I figure that there are plenty of people out there who have said exactly what I would say, only they've already said it better, more grammatically, and with less use of the words "motherfucker."

But one thing I will say is that I am terribly unimpressed with the guys of American news media. So far, very few American media outlets have run the cartoons. Some yob on NPR Sunday morning took pains to point out that NPR "linked to" a site that had the cartoons, but that's hardly the same thing as stepping up and taking a stand for freedom of speech and putting yourself shoulder to shoulder with your beleaguered Danish brothers. When you lack the intestinal fortitude of the French, it's time to go home. You don't belong in a newsroom.

That said, I have some new heroes this morning: the entire editorial staff of The New York Press, who quit en masse yesterday when their publisher refused to print the cartoons. From former Editor-In-Chief Harry Segal's statement:

"We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them."