Islam - "So we're all Rushdies now"

Lileks has some thoughts on the media's fear of Muslims.

As it happens, the threat to free speech isn't coming from the government. While we don't doubt that the Patriot Act will be invoked any day now to criminalize dissent and seal up Cindy Sheehan in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, it should be noted that the people who've suppressed the pictures are the ones who run the big old high-and-mighty mainstream media. Smaller outfits with spines have run them, with less than happy results -- the editor of a college paper in Illinois was suspended for running the Horrid Scribbles of Doom, for example. This hardly means the death of the First Amendment. But add some riots, some flaming fatwas, some imams upping the bounty on the heads of cartoonists, and it has that "chilling effect" we hear so much about when government officials criticize a news story.

So we're all Rushdies now, like it or not? Perhaps. If one cannot draw Muhammad without editors fearing the mob in the lobby, then it's only a matter of time before the idea seeps into the heads of cartoonists everywhere. It's simply not worth it; who needs the aggravation? Who needs the meetings with the community groups, the mandatory sensitivity training, the sinking feeling of finding your picture on a placard in a London protest, next to the sign that says "BEHEAD THOSE WHO ACCUSE US OF BEHEADING."

It will all blow over. The press will get its nerve back, and start investigating whether Jack Abramoff bought Cheney a beer in 1997 and thus impaired his aim in 2006, or something. They'll return to their old brave role: Questioning Authority. Unless it's located in Mecca.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------