Helpful hint: media and pundits OK w/ Piss Christ but not Pam Geller are not “hypocrites”

Last updated on: May 5, 2015 at 2:07 pm by Jane the Actuary

Helpful hint: media and pundits OK w/ Piss Christ but not Pam Geller are not “hypocrites” 2015-05-05T14:07:36-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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– they just don’t support the First Amendment.

So reads my (1000th) tweet earlier today, after reading repeated complaints from the Right that the Left and the media are being hypocrites in having mocked opponents of Piss Christ, the Virgin Mary in dung, and other Great Achievements in Art, and having assiduously defended the Brooklyn Museum of Art in displaying these images, now being indifferent to the mocking of Mormons that is the whole of the Book of Mormon Broadway musical, and yet at the same time, being all too willing to suggest that Pamela Geller brought the attack upon herself by her criticism of Islam and, in particular, the Muhammed-drawing contest she held.

Now, one of the articles that’s being cited in this regard, from the LA Times, must have been substantially revised since then, because the only vestige of these implications that so-called “hate speech” isn’t to be tolerated is the single sentence,

The Garland attack refocused public attention on the fine line between free speech and hate speech in the ideological struggle between radical Islam and the West.

The other article that’s being cited is this: “Event organizer offers no apology after thwarted attack in Texas,” in the Washington Post, a somewhat odd headline choice when there is no discussion in the article about apologies. Presumably the CNN interviewer referenced in the article asked her to apologize, so the real news there is “news anchor expects Geller to apologize in the wake of Muslims communicating, via an attempted assassination, that they were upset with her,” perhaps coming out of a knee-jerk 2015 conception of apologies as being offered automatically to those who take offense, in which whether you did or said something wrong is immaterial — though the text of the linked CNN article doesn’t speak of apologies.

Anyway, this is pretty thin gruel; most articles I’m finding seem to agree that Geller does indeed have a right to free speech that should not be constrained just because she’s saying mean things.

At the same time, there are plenty of people willing to say, “just because you have the right to do so, doesn’t mean that you should do so, because you are, after all, being mean, and you shouldn’t be mean.” And it is certainly the case that one shouldn’t just gratuitously say mean things, and Geller would probably be more effective in reaching people with her message in other ways.

But are the media, and progressives, playing a game of double-standards when it comes to offensive speech about Christianity?

The infamous Piss Christ controversy dates back to 1989. How would the media react today? For what it’s worth, the AP removed an image of this photograph from its image library in January of this year, according to this report. Are there more recent examples of similar actions?

In any case, this is all about not hurting people’s feelings — or, rather, the more specific rule: “don’t hurt the feelings of those who are downtrodden; but the powerful are fair game.” And in the case of religious groups in the U.S. and Europe, Muslims are “downtrodden” but Mormons and mainstream Christians, well, they’re in power and thus eminently mockable.

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