Any Capitol Hill Blue defenders want to explain this to me?

[mattclearing]

I know this isn't Doug Thompson writing, first off. But apparently his protegé, Dale McFeatters, will knock Cindy Sheehan for wearing a t-shirt right after praising the anti-Muslim cartoonists for their bigotry-inducing exercise of free speech (Disclosure: I don't believe in the concept of hate speech...only free speech).

I just want people who are sold on everything CHB does to take a good look at some of its handiwork and question the source.


http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8097.shtml
Cindy Sheehan's shrill sideshow

By DALE McFEATTERS
Feb 2, 2006, 00:10

Has the state of American antiwar protest really come down to Cindy Sheehan?

Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, was once a figure of considerable sympathy. Now she comes off as shrill, humorless and self-promoting, which is hard to do in the nation's capital, given the level of competition.

The night of President Bush's State of the Union message, she was ousted from the House visitors' gallery for wearing a T-shirt _ that personal billboard for beliefs, products and places _ with an antiwar slogan, "2,245 dead. How many more?"

She feels her right of free speech was infringed and wrote on her Web site, "I don't want to live in a country that prohibits any person ... from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government."

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http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8091.shtml
In defense of freedom of expression
By DALE McFEATTERS
Feb 1, 2006, 01:25


Under the principle of freedom of expression, blasphemy can be vulgar, in execrable taste, offensive in the extreme, but never prohibited.

Last September, cartoonists on the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten decided to test the proposition that Western European news outlets were self-censoring themselves for fear of provoking a violent Islamic backlash.

The paper published a dozen caricatures, most of them mild by U.S. standards. One showed a line of tattered suicide bombers being turned away, presumably by the Prophet Muhammad, from the gates of heaven because paradise had run out of turbans. Perhaps the most provocative of them showed Muhammad's turban as a bomb with the fuse lit.

The cartoons outraged the Muslim community because, traditionally, the prophet is never depicted lest the image lead to idolatry. Demands for an apology escalated until this week Jyllands-Posten apologized and the Danish prime minister sort of apologized; he said he would never depict any religious figure "in a way that could offend other people." Denmark's Muslim community accepted the apology. All that's fine.


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[wryter2000]

1. I don't take what they say without confirming it somewhere else

And I don't think I've ever seen confirmation for their outrageous stories, even the ones I'd dearly love to believe.

[benburch]

2. Do journalists have to agree all time with our points of view?

Nope.

Doesn't mean they don't sometimes report a true story!

[mattclearing]

3. True.

But I'd like this to go into the "consider the source" file.