So I’m glancing through the WSJ this morning and happen upon L. Gordon Crovitz’s column, “More Insults, Please”. He’s explaining how the publishing of Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten – especially that one with the stick of dynamite in his turban - caused protests, rioting and other mayhem across the Muslim world.
I thought they were kind of cute, but apparently some do not share my keen wit and ability to reflect on such images. But I digress.
in a speech he gave last Saturday in New York, Kurt Westergaard, the cartoons’ creator (currently living in Copenhagen under 24 hour police protection), remarked:
"As the Danish tradition is for satire, we say you can speak freely, you can vote, you can speak out any time, but there's only one thing you can't do—you can't be free of being mocked or being offended," Mr. Westergaard said in a speech in New York City. "That's the condition in Denmark."
All I have to say is, where the hell were our international protocol and intelligence teams? Why didn’t someone over at the State Department tell us about this Danish policy before we put everything on the line to bring the Olympic games to the capital of Pay-To-Play cities? We just assumed that we would be treated to the same fawning adulation and deference we get in the USA: the country that invented free speech.
We arrived with soaring expectations, only to have the whole thing blow up in our face.
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