Free Speech

So The Dominion is back on form. They published the Danish cartoons that caused all the controversy and accompanied the article with the worst explanation for publishing anything ever:

Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst said the publication was a test of Islamic tolerance.

So do they fail if they crticise the paper? Because they're being intolerant. Or do they pass, because criticising what someone says is actually freedom of speech. What's the standard by which they become real boys? Should they start a Tuskagee institute, would that help?

Of course my fundamental objection to those cartoons is that they're all really bad.

Or you could just go and read Tze Ming, who says anything I'm thinking, but angrier and better:

Why be so determined to publish low-quality cartoons only, and specifically only because they will upset a vast amount of people who never did anything to you, but who, rather, have had to put up with this crap in escalating doses since September 2001? The right to 'take the mickey' is truly satisfying when the powerful are being mocked. What kind of satisfaction are these newspapers taking from putting the boot into people who are already floored? I mean, what is the point?

What I hate the most about these 'freedom-of-speech' moments, is that when the desired outrage is elicited from some cheap shot (eg, a newpaper gets called a pack of cunts, people stop buying Danish cheese) then those reactions are deemed attacks on freedom of speech. Well, they're not. They're further expressions of freedom of speech. Sow, reap, eat.