Sunday, February 19, 2006

Terror Wins Big In US Print Media

Someone in the US newspaper business finally had the courage to tell it like it is.

You might think this means that a newspaper had the courage to publish the Danish Muhammed cartoon caricatures but you would be wrong.

Instead, what we have is The Phoenix, a Boston alternative newspaper, printing the following editorial,
"Our primary reason," the editors confessed, is ''fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history."
Whatever happened to folks like Patrick Henry who were willing to declare, "Give me liberty or give me death!"?

Thus far only the Weekly Standard, the Philadelphia Enquirer and a handful of college and minor subsistence papers have shown the courage to publish the cartoons.

American newspapers ridicule and insult people and opinions every day. It appears that radical Islamists are the only exception. Those that say they are being "sensitive" to the feelings of Muslims are lying hypocrites.

The Phoenix, while choosing not to print the cartoons, at least had the "courage" to tell the truth.

While in its own way this honesty is commendable it is not enough.

When your neighbor tells you that he will burn your house down if you plant tomatoes in your back yard you get a restraining order on your neighbor and plant tomatoes in your back yard . . . even if you never had a garden before!

At the moment I feel like growing tomatoes just so I can throw them at the editors of our American newspapers. We either stand tall or bend over for those who threaten us. At the moment I see the American press bent over and bowing towards Mecca.