At least someone has found a silver lining to the Charlie Hebdo murders: conservatives have used it to leverage censorship of a photo they don’t like.
After leaving the highly offensive photo titled “Piss Christ” posted for 26 years — despite decades of public Christian outcry over the image panned as art — The Associated Press finally removed the controversial and denigrating image, but only after a journalist called out its double standard brought to light when it touted its policy of not publishing potentially offensive Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoons of Muhammad, such as the ones that incited the deadly Paris attack.
Murdering 12 people has apparently served Jesus well, by getting a sacrilegious (to far right Christians) image removed from the AP library, all so AP can appear consistent in their censorship of images sacrilegious to far right Muslims.
It’s bad enough that conservatives saw the killings as an opportunity to get their way — it’s another expression of Fatwah Envy, I guess — but worse, this warrants serious condemnation of the cowards at AP.
By the way, take a look at Wikipedia’s response to suggestions that it censor depictions of Mohammed — that’s the way to do it, and it puts AP to shame.
Not good. Not the result for which more than a million marchers in Paris had hoped.
NBC apparently told anchors on MSNBC not to show the new Charlie Hebdo cover, the one coming out tomorrow. That’s really bad since MSNBC is supposed to be a bastion of free speech and honesty. It’s almost a side note, but though the new cover shows the Prophet Muhammad, it is not offensive.
Far-right assholes and far-right assholes… Just like two guys at a 3-Card Monte table. They pretend to be opponents, but their unified goal is to screw you over.
Well I say shit Christ!
So, the Christian answer to a mass murder done in the name of Islam over sacrilegious images is to come back with an implicit threat for the publication of images considered sacrilegious by Christians?
‘We’re not even going to kill you …be fair!’
The AP is a house of cowards.
Fucking hell.
The few comments over at that first link in the OP are …well …they inhabit a bizarro universe, clearly.
Can anyone find a response or anything from the AP about this? My Google-fu has failed me or they’re keeping mum.
This is The Shock Doctrine on the social/political front. The Right excels at exploiting crisis to advance their agenda on all fronts.
It’s one reason why a good response to a sudden crisis is to focus on the immediate problem and avoid ripple effects; don’t change things that don’t have to be changed, because chances are we are not thinking clearly.
But our media loves a good “This changes everything!” story, so they feed the beast instead of providing calming, mature perspective. Yet another way in which they carry water for the Right.
…except members of the “religion of peace” (christianity) have made death threats to the Piss Christ artist and the gallery where it is displayed. In 2011, a mob swarmed the gallery and slashed the picture and other nearby works.
An interview with Caroline Fourest, the current Charlie Hebdo editor, excellent.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/charlie-hebdo-survivors-shocked-383204419925 Caroline thinks it is the “saddest thing I have ever heard” that US-based news sources are not showing the Hebdo cartoons.
More here: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/charlie-hebdo-editor-we-will-continue-383204419699
More here:
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/charlie-hebdo-hunkers-down-in-new-offices-383611459649
At least one of the Abrahamic faiths knows the solution is to just photoshop the offensive elements out: http://www.mediaite.com/online/ultra-orthodox-jewish-newspaper-edits-female-world-leaders-out-of-charlie-hebdo-march/
This is really terrible, the aftermath of the terrorist attack is to bow down to those demanding censorship? The issue of Charlie due out tomorrow is being printed in nearly 3 million copies, translated into 16 languages. Its message might be missed by a lot of people not used to their sacriligeous ways, but they are not going to change. Another possible bad aftermath, France is considering implementing their own version of the Patriot Act…http://lci.tf1.fr/monde/amerique/vers-un-patriot-act-a-la-francaise-8546168.html (I could only find a french link, sorry).
latveriandiplomat @6:
And yet, when it’s one of their pet topics suddenly being questioned (like gun control) it’s always ‘too soon to talk about’.
So not only are they right wing authoritarian wankers, they’re hypocritical right wing authoritarian wankers.
Anyone who’s surprised by this, raise your hand…..
Usernames! (ᵔᴥᵔ) @ #7, then it’s not even implicit, it’s explicit. ‘We might kill you …be fair!’
The point remains that it’s massively ironic.
I got to see Piss Christ in person a ways back. I thought it was actually a quite pretty photo. I was much more scandalized by all the KKK people & and older people doing bondage stuff photos (hey, it was a ways back, I was younger). Which brings me back to the idea that it doesn’t even matter what the ‘blasphemous’ image is, it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t say on the magazine that it is Muhammad, it only matters that some think it is ‘blasphemous’, and they will do anything to get rid of it. I can only think it will become worse if people don’t stand up to it.
Sh*t! Poland is supposed to be ultra-Catholic, and we still have laws against “offending religious feelings and objects of religious cult” (at least on paper), but the new Charlie Hebdo cover was the very first thing I saw this morning on our largest paper’s website, checking the latest news:
BLASSSSSPHEMY!
(Warning: some folks may cut your throat for looking at it.)
What doest it take, in the 21st century, to be so scared of friggin’ cartoons?
#14 Well there’s “Attack on Titan” and tentacle hentai that’s pretty scary. Not that I’ve seen them but they’re in enough internet memes to be scary. Not “kill people” or even “commit violence” scary; more along the lines of “I’m never watching this” scary.
I’m rather more worried about the UK Tories trying to replicate the US GOP success of the PATRIOT act.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/david-cameron-encrypted-messaging-apps-ban
Some parts of the French leadership are also toying with reviving laws they tried and failed to pass last year. I love the French adjective that opponents use: “liberticide”
Really? That piss-christ picture still has relevance because nothing even remotely like it has been done in years. (And it wasn’t so bad.) But dang if the Christians don’t whip it out to whip themselves into a frenzy with. Protip, guys: When your best symbol of persecution is decades old and is your only symbol of persecution, you ain’t persecuted.
(Reminds me of my daughter trying to be all counter-culture. When you buy your rebellion stuff at a chain store in the mall, you really aren’t being a wild individual.)
In similar news as mentioned above, our brave European leaders are all banding together to take a grand stand for freedom of speech… by trying to enact new censorship rules on the internet to ‘combat hateful (*) speech’.
(*) As defined by the powers that be.
If they are not going to publish anything that offends some group they will be publishing blank pages.
Both Huffington Post and The Daily Kos have been publishing the cartoons.
They neglected to mention that Andres Serrano got death threats for “piss christ” and that the artwork was violently destroyed by christian fundamentalists in a museum in France.
Back when that happened, the best statement I could make was my “yello jello jesus” (with strawberries)
http://www.ranum.com/linkedimages/embedded%20-%20jello%20jesus.jpg
FWIW
Or puts Yale University Press to shame, considering they published The Cartoons that Shook the Word, an entire book about the 2006 Mohammed cartoon controversy, yet did not reprint any of the cartoons in question.
This is the way forward: Mainstream muslims in Western countries tellings islamists to “fuck off”!
Muslim mayor of Rotterdam Ahmed Aboutaleb tells Islamists to ‘pack your bags’ and ‘fuck off’ on live TV
It seems rather uncharitable to say that conservatives are using this event to get their way. It seems more to they are simply pointing out a double standard, something that every news agency should strive to avoid. You could criticize both sides in this mess, so only castigating conservatives reveals a bias in your own thought process. The AP said “It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving deliberately provocative images” and yet that clearly isn’t the case. What they really meant to say was “It’s been our policy for years that we refrain from moving [what we deem to be] deliberately provocative images”
Now, frankly that’s a stupid policy because EVERY image they move will be provocative to someone in some way. As a news agency, they SHOULD be moving provocative images. If they don’t then what is the point? What they are doing by not reporting on newsworthy provocative images is called pandering and it undermines their credibility (not that they had much to begin with).
#8 Lynna. I know Caroline Fourest very well though not personally. She is a historian and sociologist who often appears on TV and radio in France and has written several books.
Incidentally she is a feminist lesbian. I think I agree with her almost all the time. She is not a comic per se and I am happy she wasn’t at the office.
pflynn @ #24
Except it isn’t uncharitable at all because it’s exactly what’s happened.
Except it’s not a double standard at all.
Both sides? Who are these sides? The AP publishing a single image for over 20 years that some Christians took issue with and those Christians, who in response to a tragedy whined to have a ‘sacrilegious’ picture taken down because they’re envious that some Muslims have murdered people to get their way?
It reveals no bias in anyone’s thought process unless you grant that there is some equivalence between not showing images for fear of being targeted for murder and taking down a single image because some Christians who clutch pearls at a piece of artwork think it’s unfair that they have to murder before an image they deem offensive is censored.
I agree that the AP should not be censoring itself in any way, even, I’d say, over the threats and actions of murderous extremists, but it’s not my life on the line (not directly anyhow). What they certainly shouldn’t be doing is making deep wais and castigating themselves over the mere affront of some pearl clutching Christians
AP did this all wrong. Their response should have been
Or they should have put up the CH covers for their newsworthiness. That would have worked too.
I remember one discussion on Usenet (this was, after all, 26 years ago) about “Piss Christ”. Even after all this time, I remember one comment made by a nephrologist. He saw urine as part of the process that makes our lives possible. To him, kidneys and their mechanisms were intricate and beautiful.
If you look for filth, you will find filth. If you look for beauty, you will find the beautiful. If you look for miracles, you will find the miraculous. This is a beautiful and amazing world. It seems to me that there are quite a few religious folk that talk about the miracle of God’s handiwork. But when they look around, all they see is ugliness and sin.