Yesterday I saw your typical shock horror of muslims going crazy, rioting in the streets on the TV yesterday because of cartoon depictions of Muhammad. Anyway, me mate Wayne forwards me this article this morning. In the article she publishes the images that caused all the ruckus in the first place. The following is a quick excerpt:

Last October, I blogged about a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and its cartoonists being threatened by Muslim extremists for publishing cartoons about the prophet Muhammad deemed offensive by Islamist p.c. bulllies. See here and here.

For the past four months, The Brussels Journal has relentlessly covered the ensuing uproar from the Muslim world and the battle over the newspaper’s freedom to publish provocative speech.

Knowing full well that politics makes for strange bedfellows, i’m still not totally sure I want this woman on the side of freedom of speech. Michelle Malkin claims that for posterity and solidarity with the Danish, she’s publishing the toons for all to see. So that ‘the west’ doesn’t cave into muslims apparently quite happy to parodise Jewish and Christian figures, but is fundamentally opposed to any caricature of Muhammad.  That all seems good and patriotic, she even calls her effort, an act of solidarity. But look around her blog. This woman evidently doesn’t believe in freedom of speech in her own country!

Check out the site. There’s a big old banner ad for the GOP, or the Republicans. I’ve been back a few times and it appears to be a permanent feature. if this isn’t ringing any bells, it’s George W Bush’s party. I can’t think of any one administration that has overseen more attacks on freedom of speech than the Bush family. Just off of the top of my head:

  • changing media ownership rules so that the Clearchannel Network own virtually everything. Driving Howard Stern amongst others onto uncensored satellite radio.
  • further relaxing media ownership laws so that Ruppert Murdoch to have a reach of three quarters of the worlds’ population.
  • strengthening the FCC (headed by Colin Powell’s brother) after something as pathetic as a nipple in the Superbowl. So yeah there’s freedom of speech, so long as the conservative right agree with it. You can’t even say penis on TV any more in the US.
  • implementing the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II which inadvertantly make any critic of the war effort a threat to national security.
  • keeping tight lipped on the actual number of war casualties in Iraq. Especially considering so many of them are National Guard troops, that should be taking care of stuff like, you know, Cyclone Katrina. And that’s where they’d be if the Republicans didn’t decide that the best defence was attack. Try telling that to to anyone in Louisiana.
  • not allowing the coffins of US war casualties being flown home to be photographed or published.

Then you look at her book references. So I always work on the parable that Democracy is two wolves and a sheep arguing over what’s for dinner.  She doesn’t seem to agree with me on this one. Makin’s In Defense of Internment the blurb tells of imprisonment of Japanese citizens in camps during WW2, who volunteered to be imprisoned. You don’t really have to see the book to judge for yourself that the parable applies here. Soldiers come to your door and say that you’re a threat to national security and suddenly you’re the sheep and they’re the wolves. There’s no premise of honest journalism here. So she writes this book because she’s pro racial profiling. Yeah even better, you can say anything you want so long as you fit our profile. I’m sure you’d be saying that if you were a second generation Japanese American in 1942.

Malkin pulls no bones about being conservative. She has her mugshot on every page and admitedly she’s freaking hot. But what journalist puts their profile shot on the page except one that wants to bias you to an uber conservative, Republican, cute Asian chick? Check out the business suit. She has a full fledged glamour shot on another page. It’s that typical, ‘I’m clean cut so how can I be evil? I am the American dream!’ look that means your unbiased discourse is completely out the window. And so is your credibility.

Malkin, if you’re so big on freedom of speech, why don’t you go talk to the ex-Fox journos that couldn’t get their expose on Monsanto aired, covered in explicit detail in documentary The Corporation? It’s a lot easier to stand up for freedom of speech when the enemy is brown isn’t it! Especially when you’re a minority yourself. It’s so much easier to get acceptance.

Now that i’ve finished the rant about Republicans and how they’re America’s own, self installed worst enemy to freedom of speech, how can a conservative US journalist claim to be a saviour of it. Who gives a rat’s arse anyway? So they show a few people in a riot which was probably ramped up for the cameras, how many muslims SERIOUSLY COULDN’T GIVE A RAT’S ARSE. I’ve had a few mates who are secular muslims who would be laughing and joking about it. So why should a few fundamentalist going off chops, discredit the majority of those who don’t?

In the words of Johnny Rotten ‘if it looks like an arsehole, and smells like an arsehole, it probably is an arsehole’. Miss Malkin, i’m with Johnny on this one. Oops, I am probably going to get charged with sedition for writing this. But at least I don’t curtail to false prophets of free speech.