It's the height of irony, the news today that a Seattle cartoonist has taken the advice of the FBI and gone underground, moving house and changing her identity all because she took up where Comedy Central left off when it decided to censor an episode of South Park that was supposed to include the character of Muslim prophet Muhammad.
According to Islamic tradition, it is blasphemous to reproduce the likenesses of its prophets.
Bowing to threats, the show's producers decided to cut out the part about Muhammad rather than risk being blown to kingdom come.
As a member of the journalism community, Molly Norris was apparently pretty ticked that any media outlet would censor itself rather than take the heat that often comes with upholding the First Amendment.
Ms. Norris took up the challenge and suggested that May 20, 2010 should be declared "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day." Facebook pages in support of Norris' idea soon popped up like weeds after a warm spring rain, so much so that the Pakistani government temporarily banned the social networking site from being available to its citizens.
In hindsight, Norris said she never officially declared such a day but that her tongue-in-cheek remark went viral and got away from her.
In a digital age where information and images can circle the globe in a matter of minutes, I don't think she should have been that surprised. I also don't think she should have backpedaled and apologized profusely for her so-called transgression, but she did.
The apology wasn't enough, of course, and Ms. Norris' name was added to a hit list at the behest of U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
There are death threats and then there are death threats. What put Ms. Norris' case on the FBI's radar hasn't been publicized, but the bureau advised her the threat was serious enough that she should take extreme measures to protect herself. We can speculate about why they didn't offer to do this for her.
So while a handful of Muslim activists and pansy-assed politicians were shrilly proclaiming the right to build a mosque a stone's throw from Ground Zero, an American citizen and journalist was disconnecting herself from everything that used to be her life -- her name, her home, her friends, her job, her past.
Radical Islam set out to erase Molly Norris, and it succeeded.
Now I'm wondering where our president is. Where is his speech in which he vigorously asserts the rights of American journalists to publish freely their opinions and ideas in the pages of American newspapers? It's not to be found alongside the speech in which he boldly declared the rights of American and foreign-born Muslims to build a mosque near the site where radical Islam slaughtered 2,000 + people one bright blue day in September. I'm guessing it's not a draft on his secretary's computer waiting to be edited, either.
Odds are that such a speech will never be found because it will never be written.
Where is the FBI? The CIA? Isn't there anyone who can protect poor Ms. Norris from Islamic wingnuts both foreign and domestic?
Some are already asking whether there's any difference between asserting the freedom of religion in the mosque case and asserting freedom of speech in the Norris case. After all, if the mosque builders get short shrift, isn't it only fair for Molly Norris to sacrifice something, too?
No one has said the mosque can't or shouldn't be built, just that out of respect for 9/11 victims and survivors it should be located elsewhere. No one has said Muslims can't or shouldn't worship as they see fit. Where's the infringement on the freedom of religion? What's more, if the mosque does end up near Ground Zero then those who oppose its location will have to swallow the bitter pill and go on. The mosque and its legitimate congregants will be constitutionally protected and no one in an official capacity will ever say them nay.
Ms. Norris, on the other hand, was a newspaper cartoonist who made a personal remark that took on a life of its own. In trying to defend Comedy Central, she herself was threatened with violence and has since shut up, too. When fear or intimidation are used to silence someone, this IS an infringement on their freedom of speech. In spite of her mea culpas, though, Ms. Norris doesn't get to go on, not as she was anyway. She has to start over. The Constitution has apparently been suspended and our government is complicit.
See the difference now?
As a former journalist, my heart breaks for Molly Norris. What has happened to her should chill the spirit of every single American. She may be the first journalist to suffer this grotesque fate at the hands of a government that won't protect its citizens and their rights, but something tells me she won't be the last.
RIP Molly Norris.
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