Gentoo is currently crunching its way through the source code of OpenOffice; meanwhile, I’m working off one of my lab’s spare laptops.

The Prophet Mohammed cartoon controversy in the DI appears to have garnered lots of attention in the east-central Illinois blogosphere. (On a side note, it’s absolutely amazing to see how a nine-line stub in Wikinews has grown into a full-fledged news report as of this afternoon.) TheSquire points out that just because one has the right to publish something offensive doesn’t mean that one has to publish something offensive. Which is not really at odds with the First Amendment, if one thinks about it: it guarantees the right of freedom of expression, but it doesn’t promise any kind of protection against the reactions that such expressions ensue. So what’s going on right now is completely normal, insomuch as that the reactions to the expression of free speech remains civil and peaceful.

Perhaps the strangest part of the DI cartoons controversy was seeing the editorial board publishing a forceful, finger-pointing editorial complete with an equally vituperative dissenting piece, which apparently is a very rare occurrence. Are we in for a shakedown in the DI administration?

I’m really pissed off at the dissenting editorial.Not so much for its justification of the decision, but just the general tone of it. It seems to embody everything about Americans that rub us non-Americans the wrong way. That trying-to-be-ballsy look-at-me I’m-doing-it-because-I-can attitude is ridiculously shallow by the standards of many non-American cultures. Sure, America is the land of liberty and freedom, but freedom of action does not encompass the freedom from retribution. Why is it that so many Americans just do things because they can, without thinking too much about the repercussions? It’s not that they can that annoys me, it’s the candid and sordid lack of finesse when it comes to doing things. The tour de force method of argument here appears to little more than taking a sledgehammer to completely destroy the opponent’s platform.

In the context of the decision to publish the cartoons, the point is that the original editorial didn’t present the cartoons an academic tone of "Here’s what the fuss is all about. Do you think the responses of the Muslim world are reasonable?" but more along the lines of "Look at me, I published something controversial? What do you think?? rofl r0xx0rz"  Taking the rights of the First Amendment to boast that We are proud not to take the route of the New York Times, Washington Post or other major newspapers which have not published the cartoons. Their decision to leave their readership uninformed on an issue causing riots, death and damage is irresponsible" reflects the kind of simplistic (and somewhat provincial) for-or-against dichotomy that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in a world that is already far too complicated reduce to black-or-white dualism.

Such an attitude seems to be endemic in the nation, by the way. It’s omnipresent in the Iraq War On Terror And Everything We Don’t Like, the inconsiderate jerk making disgusting chewing noises when eating lunch in the office, and even the a person in a wheelchair scowling at a family with a pram on the bus because the pram is taking up the only available space that the wheelchair can use. It’s really sad that Americans are not doing more constructive things with their rights and appear to be using them more to sue each other to defend their rights than take on society’s problems and move the country on to the next level of civil society.

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