Cartoon Chickenhawk
On CNN’s On The Story, the Ole Perfesser* made the following point about the “famed” Danish cartoons: (transcript ours)
Abbi Tatton: You didn’t put them [Danish cartoons] on your site. Why is that?
Glenn Reynolds: They don’t belong to me, they’re not my intellectual property, I don’t have permission.
Fortunately for the Ole Perfesser, he has permission to reprint other cartoons, a picture or two from Reuters, or another picture from the NY Times. And of course it’s ok to link to a download of his appearance on CNN, since clearly the guy who put up the video had permission to do so. Intellectual property and all that.
Bonus points — random Ole Perfesser comment of the day from the same CNN appearance:
If fundamentalist Christians were writing about Will & Grace, would you take if off the air?
Which he followed with a smirk that said “aren’t I funny, kids?” directed at the camera. (Sadly, No!)
* Borrowed without permission from Roy.
This isn’t about free speech–nobody’s censoring these cartoons, and nobody’s going to.
What a total fucking WEASEL. And the right is saying lefties are being all cowardly over not printing or linking to the cartoons. Of course, that’s because we think – AND SAY – they’re provocative, offensive, and worst of all, utterly stupid, and so it’s an ACTIVE CHOICE not to do so.
But Instaweasel tries to squirm out of “DEFENDING FREE SPEECH!!!” for copyright considerations? You know, you could hitch the rolling office you’ve dubbed “The Shystermobile”, shooting business cards out of the tailpipe, to the back of an ambulance … and still be less of a punchline than Glenn Reynolds.
I also don’t understand why Reynolds doesn’t just host the cartoons? They are, after all, completely harmless, way less provocative than everyday editorial cartoons, and as can be seen for example on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_cartoons
they fall completely under “fair-use”. It’s not as if they were actually offensive, as one could easily get the impression.
The Pope says that printing the cartoons gave needless offense. So did Pat Buchanan.
This is the first time I have agreed with either.
All this free speech crap is just an excuse to whip the rancid masses into a high-toned frenzy. If neocons (like Flemming Rose) aren’t behind it for this reason, they ought to be.