OK, now I'm ticked. I've got other things I want to blog about (Cox Bundled Services, Drew the Master Builder, Pa-Pa-Pa-Pringles), but noooo, the mainstream media continues to get the whole Muhammad cartoon story wrong or reports half the story or, even more frustrating, is trying to compete with the Muslims as to who lives by the greater double-standard. So...

Front page of Al Fagr - note the teaser on the right

Did you know last October, during the height of Ramadan, the Egyptian Newspaper Al Fagr (Al Fager, Al Fajr) published the Muhammad cartoons that had been published just a month before in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten? That's right, the same cartoons Muslims around the world are supposedly all upset about. And, you know what happened when the cartoons of Muhammad appeared in the Egyptian newspaper...absolutely nothing. There wasn't a single protest. No one was murdered. No buildings were burned. Nadda. Nothing.

Enlarged date: October 17, 2005

Egypt has a population of 77.5 million of which 94% are Muslim and those are comprised mostly of conservative Sunni. Now if they weren't upset about the paper's publication of the imageless "prophet" then this whole Muslim uprising isn't really about the European papers' publishing the cartoons. This is further evidenced by the fact that news of Al Fagr's publication of the cartoons has now gone around the world and no other Muslim nation is calling for a boycott of Egyptian goods or burning Egyptian embassies or threatening to murder Egyptian newspaper editors.

Muhammad Cartoons in Al Fagr

So what is all the fuss really about? Well, don't look for a rational reason. Any rational reason has been disproven. The people who are protesting, committing and threatening violence are irrational. They are driven by hatred, bloodlust, jealousy, ignorance and provoked by religious and political leaders who fear freedom and democracy because they know they will lose their power if such ideals ever took hold.

But, I haven't told you anything you didn't already know because you already heard it all in the mainstream press, ABCCBSNBCCNNPBS, right? Thought not.

So now that we know even in a Muslim nation, it's no big deal to publish cartoons of Muhammad, you've got to wonder why the American media still won't show them. CNN previously made this disclaimer:

"CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam."

Now CNN makes this updated disclaimer:

"CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Muhammad because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself."

One wonders if CNN is so concerned about showing "respect" for religions and wanting to cover issues without "unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy" then why in the past has it shown images of Piss Christ (crucifix submerged in urine) and the Virgin Mary made with cow dung? As to "negative caricatures," shouldn't the viewer make that decision...along the lines of "we report, you decide." CNN's disclaimer particularly makes no sense when at least three of the cartoons are not in any manner negative. CNN's own Lou Dobbs correctly pointed out that, "you cannot report the story faithfully without showing these images, particularly when they're so widely available on the Internet."

Likewise, the New York Times this week in reporting about The Power of Imagery continued its refusal to reprint the Muhammad cartoons but didn't hesitate to drag up a seven year old photo of the dung covered Virgin Mary. It seems to me like there's one standard for Islam, that isn't even followed in Muslim countries, and a different standard for Christianity.

While only a handful of American newspapers have printed the cartoons, I am extremely proud to say that the newspaper of my alma mater the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Daily Illini [see update below], has published a number of the cartoons recognizing:

"All across this nation, editors are gripped in fear of printing ... for fear of the reaction. As a journalist, this flies in the face of everything I hold dear. By refusing to print these editorial cartoons, we are preventing an important issue from being debated openly by the public.

If anything, journalists all over this country should be letting the public decide for themselves what to think of these cartoons.
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Exercise your First Amendment right and don't be afraid to say something unpopular. As citizens, we have a right to use that freedom."

NOTE: Are you aware that when the "prophet" Muhammad was 54 years old he married one of his wives, Aisha, who was only 6 years old? Don't worry, he didn't consummate his marriage until she was 9 years old. Isn't there a word for that? To be fair, more liberal Shi'a Muslims for the most part refute that Aisha was nine at the time, while more conservative Sunni Muslims stand by the six and nine ages which came from Aisha herself.

[UPDATE:] It turns out the Daily Illini is just another spineless liberal rag without an ounce of journalistic integrity. The cartoons were published in the Daily Illini but only because of the courage and rational thought of the then Editor-In-Chief Acton Gorton and Opinions Editor Chuck Prochaska. Subsequently, Gorton was terminated on trumpeted up procedural grounds and Prochaska resigned. Worse yet, in a Stalinist tribute to their true beliefs, the Daily Illini erased any mention of the incident from their archives, requested Google do the same, and when later reporting on the cartoons and the actions of other colleges, failed to mention the controversy which occurred on its own campus, within its own offices. More here.