Readers of this blog continually surprise me

Sure, the comments often come as a surprise, as do the places people come here from. But today, someone used search terms that about floored me: "Eugene Robinson is an idiot."

Naturally, this is true, but it also is the title of this post, which I wrote shortly after the massacre at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. As some of you may recall, Charlie Hebdo is a French satire weekly that used to publish lots of cartoons mocking radical Islamists. They don't anymore, because the guys who drew the cartoons as well as the guys who thought it was a good idea to publish those cartoons all got killed that day.

It never hurts to tell Islamists to fuck off. So, Islamists, fuck off:

No, really. Fuck off, Islamists. Come by sometime to get your 72 virgins or whatever you think is waiting for you. Fascinating to me that someone used those search terms to find the blog. Pretty specific, really.

Anonymity ain't what it used to be

Four or five of the other people on my new project -- and there are only ten of us -- were on the project I was last on. Naturally, there has been some discussion of the batshit people who were on that project. I wound up not posting much about that project because a person on the project was trying to get me fired because of the blog. Even after that threat ebbed -- for some reason, the person decided I was OK -- I didn't post much because I wasn't sure what the agency had been told. Also, I was as busy as a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest, working 70 hours a week or more.

Anyway, during the discussion of some of the people on that project, I mentioned that someone on the gig tried to get me fired. Naturally, someone asked why, and I said, "Well, I do this blog . . . "

Immediately, in unison, four people said, "That's you?"

So, yeah, I guess I'll be coming out soon. Any reader can figure out who I am, and -- as my European correspondent has pointed out -- where I live. That might not be a great situation, considering how often I publish Charlie Hebdo cartoons to taunt Islamist nutbags, but I guess that's where I am. So look for a coming-out party soon.

For those of you not initiated, these are Charlie Hebdo cartoons:

Islamists hate them and issue death threats against people who publish them, since they believe it is heresy to publish an image of Muhammed. Fortunately, I am not a Muslim and am not committing heresy. So far, no Islamists have noticed I keep publishing the cartoons, I guess. I don't much care if they do. Just don't come to kill me during the NFL draft Thursday. That would really piss me off.

Courageous media heaps praise on Charlie Hebdo, still won't publish cartoons

Hot Air points out that U.S. lamestream media leaders like the New York Times and The Associated Press still won't publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that got so many staffers of the magazine killed by Islamist terrorists. That's a strange position to take given how big of a news story this is:

Normally CH’s circulation is 60,000 copies. They printed three million of the new one to try to meet expected demand after the massacre, but sales are so hot in France this morning that they’ve already had to bump the print run up to five million. The issue’s been condemned by Sunni authorities, in the form of Egypt’s grand mufti, and Shiite ones, via Iranian state media. All of which is to say, this feels newsy. Go look at how the AP is handling photos of Parisians on line, though. Everyone who ventures out publicly to buy the issue is taking a risk that some Kouachi sympathizer will copycat the Charlie Hebdo attack by shooting up a newsstand. Given the denunciations from Islamic clerics and the fact that French security suspects the Kouachis had accomplices, that risk is real. Basic solidarity with France in defense of free speech today should mean, at the very least, showing at least as much balls as the average Frenchman strolling around Paris with a copy of the offending issue on full display in his own hands.

Yeah, I wouldn't think the New York Times would be big on courage. Even The New York Times is embarrassed by the Times, or at least the paper's ombudsman is:

Readers responded passionately, and in large numbers, to my post last week about The Times’s decision not to publish the now-famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. (In fact, I’ve never had more comments on a post or column.)
A vast majority of readers were critical of The Times’s decision, feeling strongly that both because of news value and in order to reinforce free speech and show solidarity with a publication under attack, The Times should have published them.
Just Monday, a new decision came along and The Times stayed with its earlier determination, showing no image of the new cover of Charlie Hebdo, which features a tearful Muhammad, holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign, with a tagline that says “All is forgiven.” Instead, a Times article described the cover image and linked to an article that showed the cover illustration.
But that’s of little help to the print readers, who — if their only news source was The Times — could have gone through this whole tumultuous week without much sense of what the offending cartoons look like. That does them a disservice.

 I believe, by the way, that The New York Times is one of the outlets getting the finger from Charlie with this cover. The Times' ombudsman made the same mistake I did, at first, with respect to the meaning of the cartoon. I don't think that Charlie's staff is forgiving the Islamist terrorists, and I don't think they believe the prophet the Islamist terrorists serve is forgiving Charlie for its past mockery of Islam. It might be hip to hold up your "Je suis Charlie" sign for a few minutes, but Charlie isn't buying it, given the widespread oppobrium Charlie has endured over the years from all corners. Mohammed here is just a symbol of the hypocrisy of Charlies' critics:

Support Charlie and freedom of speech and oppose Islamist terrorists? Publish the damn cartoon. To do otherwise is to give the Islamist terrorists everything they hoped to achieve by killing the Charlie staff: the silencing of critics.

Apparently I'm more courageous than most of the newspapers in Europe, too

While U.S. newspapers have been declining to republish any Charlie cartoons, apparently many European newspapers republished some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons satirizing Islam that prompted the Islamist terror assault on Charlie's offices on Tuesday. However, it appears that a majority did not:

COPENHAGEN/LONDON (Reuters) - Many European newspapers republished cartoons from the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo to protest against killings by Islamist militants seen as an attack on freedom of expression and the continent's tradition of visual satire.
But most front pages expressed solidarity with the 12 people, journalists and police, killed in Wednesday's attack by publishing their own cartoons and editorials that veered away from Charlie Hebdo's more provocative sketches mocking Islam.

Some editors and cartoonists explicitly acknowledged that fear drove the decision not to republish any of the cartoons:

The front page of Austria’s Salzburger Nachrichten showed a cartoon which consists of a black space with ink and a fountain pen in one corner and this hand-written message:
"As a caricaturist I have been of the opinion up to now that there was no topic that cannot be drawn. I have to admit that the tragic incident which took place in Paris yesterday taught me otherwise."

Look, I get it: republishing Charlie Hebdo cartoons about Islam can be dangerous. But the people at Charlie Hebdo knew what they were doing carried risk and did it anyway because that's what they do: they mock religions, institutions and pretty much anything else that catches their eye. (And they plan to keep doing it.) They got attacked because they were alone, just as Jyllands Posten, a Danish newspaper, was alone a few years ago when it published a number of cartoons mocking Islam, including one depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Jyllands Posten's staff remains under police protection for that "offense," and the paper chose not to republish any Charlie cartoons. If all newspapers -- or even most -- republished the cartoons and quit treating Islam like a delicate flower that can't be criticized, none of them would be alone. There really is safety in numbers, you know. But as long as Islamists believe they can make the media cower in fear and refuse to criticize Islam and Islamists, they will continue to attack -- literally -- anyone brave enough to do so. Almost no newspapers in this country appear to be that brave. The Washington Post published one of the cartoons on today's op-ed page, but won't be publishing any in the news pages. Most other major publications have either not published or cropped out or pixilated the "offensive" portion of the cartoon, as in this picture that appeared in the New York Daily News:

Wait, you blotted out Mohammed but left a caricature of a hook-nosed Jew? Really? Wow. Maybe they'll kill you last.

While it is foolish and shortsighted to let fear drive decisions, this isn't about bravery, really. It's about standing for principle. Free speech is worthless if there are topics that can't be discussed or criticized. That is doubly true if those topics can be designated by the would-be targets of the prospective criticism, and the ban on criticism enforced at the point of a gun. Still think you have free speech under those circumstances? Sure -- you're free to discuss anything you want to, unless someone willing to kill you tells you not to. If you knuckle under to those threats, you don't have free speech. And that's only the first right you'll give up. You can either grow a pair or, like the Daily News, hope they kill you last.

Well, anything worth having is worth taking some risks to keep. While the security budget here at Eff You is low (have you seen the price of ammunition lately?), we shall fear no evil. While I blog anonymously in theory, in practice anyone with any knowledge of the internet could find out my identity in about 45 seconds. In The pixelated Daily News republication, Mohammed is saying "Must not mock." 'Fraid I can't do that. The Daily News acted out of fear. I'm not, so now I'll show you the cartoon the Daily News wouldn't. And I have two things to say to any Islamists who see this and are murderously offended: 1) Please send no more than eight jihadis at a time, so I won't have to reload, and b) refer to the title of the blog -- Eff You:

Hat tip to Hot Air.

I wish I had written this piece

Over at The Weekly Standard, Mark Hemingway wrote a piece about the cowardice of our media and cultural elites. I've commented on the issue, as you know; Hemingway nails it:

If anything good is to come from this massacre, we have to first own up to and reflect upon the unbelievable cowardice and accommodation of our media and cultural elites in the face of literal assaults on our most basic freedoms. It's not just that they stay silent in the face of threats. It's not just that they don't tell the truth about their own cowardice. It's that they are so far around the bend they argue that speaking up against these threats is harmful to Muslims. Four days after Molly Norris went into hiding, The New York Times published this simpering apologia from Nicholas Kristof, "I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs."
But is it really possible to openly demean Muslims? This is pretty rich coming in the pages of a newspaper that refused to print controversial Danish Mohammed cartoons back when they were the biggest news story on the planet. Their justification for this was that "This seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols." Just about every devout Christian and Jew who has regularly read the Times likely did a spit-take reading that. The clear double standard would suggest fear of violence, not concern for readers’ delicate sensibilities, was the primary rationale for the Times' questionable decision here.

He's so right. It isn't just the Charlie Hebdo attack, it's every time Islamists clash with Western civilization. We even deny that there is any link between Islamist terrorists and Islam (shut it, Howard Dean). The federal goverment called the Fort Hood shootings "workplace violence" instead of the terrorist attack it was, even though the shooter was shouting "Allahu Akhbar" the whole time. Everyone is so afraid of "offending Muslims" that the Islamists can always find someone who will insist that it isn't the religion, it's just a few crazies twisting "the religion of peace," always using the exclusive pronoun, as if all other religions were "religions of violence" and only Islam is the religion of peace.

Well, bullshit. Throughout the Koran and Islamic scholarly writings about sharia law, the justifications for jihad against infidels are there. The terrorists aren't making it up, they're following instructions. If we keep ignoring the fact that we are in a war, we're already lost.

Part of fighting that war is to truly stand up for freedom of expression and not qualify that defense by saying, for instance, that Charlie "went over the line" (I'm looking at you, Wolf Blitzer.) or was "just being stupid" (I'm looking at you, too, Tony Barber). If you are unwilling to defense offensive speech, you are not really in favor of free speech. What other kind of speech needs defending?

Hemingway makes that point far better than I could. For heaven's sake, go read the whole thing.






http://hotair.com/archives/2015/01/07/financial-times-charlie-hebdo-kinda-asked-for-it-yknow/

I believe I called this one

That's right, CNN won't be showing any of the cartoons that prompted Muslim gunmen to "avenge the prophet" through the slayings of 12 people at Charlie Hebdo, the Paris satire magazine that published the cartoons. And as Hot Air points out, the CNN memo letting employees know that they are now all dhimmi:

[Senior CNN editorial director Richard] Griffiths’ email:
Although we are not at this time showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet considered offensive by many Muslims, platforms are encouraged to verbally describe the cartoons in detail. This is key to understanding the nature of the attack on the magazine and the tension between free expression and respect for religion.
Video or stills of street protests showing Parisians holding up copies of the offensive cartoons, if shot wide, are also OK. Avoid close-ups of the cartoons that make them clearly legible.
It’s also OK to show most of the protest cartoons making the rounds online, though care should be taken to avoid examples that include within them detailed depictions of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

And yes, apparently it is specific enough at CNN to refer to Mohammed simply as "the Prophet." I guess accepting your subjugation is like being pregnant -- you can't just accept it a little. And here I always thought The Prophet was a novel by Kahlil Gibran.

CNN hasn't been a news leader for years, though, and this is no exception -- there are lots of cowardly organizations in the lamestream media. According to Hot Air, NBC won't be showing the cartoons, Fox News showed them once and will not do so again, and the AP won't even show the cartoons on its website.

Rosie GrayVerified account‏@RosieGray

NBC News spox to me right now says they will not be showing cartoons that “could be viewed as insensitive”

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1:52 PM - 7 Jan 2015

The AP, just coincidentally, I'm sure, yesterday removed from its website it's picture of Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," a work of "art" depicting a crucifix submerged in urine. The AP has offered the picture for sale since it was taken in 1987. Apparently, someone complained that the AP was offering a photo offensive to Christians but wouldn't run pictures of the Charlie cartoons.

I'm sure this is yet another issue on which the lamestreams will stand united. Expect to be seeing those Charlie cartoons, um, nowhere in the lamestream media. Fear not -- got ya covered:

There's lots more.