Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Okay, this is just funny. After my post yesterday about the Jesus cartoons in an Oregon newspaper and the Catholic League's attempt to censor them, someone named mnuez left the following comment. My regular readers will no doubt find this as ridiculous as I do:

Boy, you sound pretty upset. Now, I haven't read every one of your pieces but I'd love to see whether you're as angry and tantrumesque about the worldwide Muslim response to cartoons of Mohammed that were a whole lot less insulting. Did you have balls enough to reprint tyhe Mohammed cartoons? I did. I, my friend, am a free-speech advocate, you however seem to be just angry at people you don't like/are afraid of.

mnuez

note: Saying that "I'm pro-free-speech" in response to worldwide muslimania don't quite equate the virulence you afforded a few impotent Catholics.

note2: I could of course be wrong.

Not only are you wrong, you're magnificently, gloriously, irretrievably wrong. About as wrong as it is possible to be in any context. And you could have spared yourself the embarrassment of your presumptuousness by doing a search for caricatures in the blog's search function. You would have seen that not only did I reprint the Muhammed caricatures, but I've written at great length about the cowardice of most media outlets in not showing them, and about the moral relativism of those who tsk tsk at anything that might offend the poor oppressed Muslims but gleefully ridicule anything Christian.

Now, the post you responded to wasn't the least bit angry. The tone was, instead, quite matter-of-fact. I calmly explained that no matter how strongly Donohue might feel about the cartoons, he can't censor them. He's free to protest them, rant and rave against them, condemn them until the cows come home, but he can't prevent them from being published and he can't punish those who published them. There was no anger there at all. No, I reserve my anger for ignorant gits who feel the need to strike the "I'm a real free speech advocate, unlike you" pose without ever bothering to find out if he was talking out his ass or not. That's a sure way to get me angry and provoke a virulent response.