Fake cartoons about to reach mainstream media

Mainstream media are slowly realizing what the blogosphere has reported for a month now. A search on Google News for Mohammed snout yields almost 500 results. Many of them are blogs and small local papers, but it's still an improvement.

One of these is the Chicago Sun Times (Media's cowardice pales next to politicians'):

Though the journalistic timidity is the lesser scandal, it has had two very serious effects.

First, by not showing readers (including Muslim readers) what all the fuss was about, it has fostered a highly exaggerated idea of just how offensive the cartoons were. Of those published in the Danish newspaper, the most offensive was that showing Muhammad's turban turning into a bomb. That was a harsh but fair comment on the policy of indiscriminate murder that radical Islamists claim to be justified by the religious concept of jihad.

Such a cartoon is leagues less offensive than those showing the prophet with a pig's snout or having sex with dogs. Millions of the rioters wrongly believe those grotesquely offensive images to be the cartoons the Danish paper published. If the mainstream media such as CNN had published the actual cartoons, those mistaken beliefs fueling the riots would at least have been diminished.

Second, because the mainstream media failed to publish the cartoons, they were very slow to discover that the most offensive and genuinely blasphemous cartoons had in fact been distributed -- and almost certainly created in the first place -- by the very Danish imams who were traveling around the Middle East seeking to stir up hatred against Danes and Christians.

One blog that has covered the case from the very start is Brussel's Journal: The Betrayal of Denmark (and of Us All)

A local newspaper in Jutland (ever heard of Jutland before?), a rural area of Denmark (one of Europe’s smallest nations, with a language spoken by barely 5 million people) published twelve drawings. Some were simple portraits of a man with Arab features, some poked fun at the newspaper itself, and barely a handful were caricatures of Muhammad, the prophet of the Muslims – hardly offensive by Western standards.

[. . .]

Anyone who sees the twelve Danish pictures wonders what all the fuss is about. However, most people do not get to see them as they have been censored in the major information sources, from the BBC to CNN, from The Guardian to The New York Times. The drawings were so inoffensive that when they were originally published last September there was no outcry, not even in Egypt where they were republished in October. Only when fanatical imams travelled from Denmark to Arabia, with suitcases containing three grossly offensive bogus cartoons which they had added to the original twelve – and only when these imams told people that these were the offensive Danish cartoons, so offensive that no-one was allowed to see them – only then Islamic mobs went on a rampage. Four months after the original drawings had been published in Jutland.

Guess who immediately appeared on the scene, adding fuel to the fire by explicitly confirming that the three bogus cartoons were the original ones? The BBC! And guess who is still refusing to show the world the twelve, hardly offensive original drawings? The BBC! Meanwhile courageous local journalists and publishers who had reprinted the cartoons to show that they were hardly offensive are lingering in jail in countries such as Jordania and Yemen.

In the long run it does get tiresome to be pissed upon by two-tongued imams, spreading their own false Muhammed cartoons on BBC and al-Jazeera.

In Jyllands-Posten, Per Nymand, is also getting tired of the world pissing on Denmark. English translation here (same page as before - scroll down):

We are being pissed upon

I feel that currently my beloved country is being pissed upon rather too much. Denmark has not been neglecting its duties on the international stage. We have supported poor people with acts and advice, we have worked for peace, we have sent soldiers, policemen and experts to all the far flung corners of the world. We have democracy, a rule of law and a welfare state. Not all is perfect, but we harbor no malice towards our fellow men.

And yet Denmark is being pissed upon. The spokesman of the US State Department is pissing on Denmark, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs is pissing on Denmark, the President of Afghanistan is pissing on Denmark, the Government of Iraq is pissing on Denmark, other Muslim regimes are pissing on Denmark. In Gaza, where Danes for years have provided humanitarian aid, crazed Imams encourage people to cut off the hands and heads of the cartoonists who made the drawings of Mohammed for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Excuse my choice of words, but all this pissing is pissing me off.