"In the mansion of free speech cartoons have an honourable room...."

[dianeduane]

My favorite article from the Times this morning...

A free society survives partly because the powerful are mocked, and their pretensions undermined. Religions, which guard their own illusions carefully, are particularly ripe for satire. And they should be...

Orwell once remarked that one reason fascism never took off in Britain was because the sight of a goose-stepping soldier would prompt your average Englishman to giggle. Someone is now silencing the giggles. And our world is a lot creepier because of it.

Tags: cartoons, South Park

Comments

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Unnerving to say the least.

[lady-autumnstar.livejournal.com]

What a well-written article. Mr. Sullivan makes a very good point. Thanks for the link.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I dislike South Park, I find it either incomprehensible or puerile, but I dislike even more people banning it, I feel tempted to go and find the 'offensive' episode on the Internet and watch it just because it was banned (this is, of course, a common reaction, at one time certain pop groups tried to get their records banned by the BBC to increase sales). It's interesting that the cast member made no such outcry about other religions, or even about doing that episode, and then apparently changed his mind later. It smacks of some form of pressure on him (not that the Hubbardites would ever do that)...