This week, I found, much to my disgust, that some dhimmi rabbis and priests prostrated themselves in CAIR’s attempts to attack a cartoonist, Chip Bok, at the Akron Beacon Journal (via Medpundit) for a cartoon he drew that made jabs not at the Islamis…

Thanks for dropping by to comment. I guess my point is pick the right battle and pick the right tactics. The tactic for the cartoons is we should ignore the complaining and use this as a time to commiserate with Muslims on how free speech is misused by some. We should agree with them and point out all those stupid comments about conservatives and Christians, etc. We should use this opportunity to bash the press for not doing its supposedly prime job – informing, not inflaming.

That would be my tactic on this battlefield. Defusing the general anger and isolating the instigators is the goal. Teaching the media is the goal. Beating Al Qaeda is the goal.

If you look at the goals I think you will agree the tactics selected do not work.

What I was saying was the news media should not be used in general to hurt or denigrate – it should be used to inform. My point was the US media has been slandering and denigrating conservatives for so long that is now what they do. They lost their purpose to their partisan desires and vision.

In that light of that definition of responsible journalism, we would neither have Piss Christ or these Cartoons because they would not be ‘informing’.

I support the right to speech, and I support responsible use of it.

Those are not in conflict.

I totally agree that vastly too much attention is being paid to these cartoons and the outrage some troublemakers have stirred up — there are dozens of serious things going on in the world (Iran’s nuclear program; North Korea’s nuclear program; the election of Hamas in Gaza; selling submarines to Taiwan; mass protests in China; the growing Indian economy; the genocide in Sudan; elections in Peru; Hugo Chavez; conservatives in Canada; tensions between India and Pakistan; and on and on…) and these cartoons don’t rate.

But… I’m still confused by the characterization of these cartoons by people I usually agree with. You wrote: “The media should never have been used to hurt others, demean them, and denigrate their causes or beliefs.”

Is that what you think the Danish paper was doing?

It seems obvious to me that these twelve cartoons are well within the bounds of civilized discourse. Can you explain why you apparently don’t — or at least which ones you feel are outside the bounds? Several of them seem to have aimed their wit more at the Danish newspaper itself than at anything Islamic, while several other seem to be simply illustrations.