In the latest issue of the New Yorker, in a piece called “Intolerance,” Lawrence Wright compares me to the radical Danish imams who incited the Islamic world to riot over the cartoons of Muhammad that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Ironic, isn’t it, when we are so tolerant of a fatal ideology, and worse, a subversive, dangerous media is shilling for our mortal enemy.

Wright reports that the Danish cartoons were published without incident. This is true. I posted about the cartoons at my website AtlasShrugs.com in October 2005, before the international riots over them began. But then he goes on to erroneously state that the extremist Danish imams to whom he compares me are the ones who ginned up the ummah. Not so. These imams did create false cartoons that were more inflammatory than the ones in Jyllands-Posten in order to give some heft to their incitement to murder, but it was the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a global international body, that initiated the cartoon jihad in December 2005.

And as for his equation of me with these imams, patriots and freedom lovers across the world have not set Muslim embassies on fire and slaughtered non-Muslims, as Muslims did when they rioted and rampaged through various countries. How dare Wright make such an ugly and false comparison. (more…)

That would be Ross Douthat of the New York Times, the center-right Op-Ed columnist who looks like Attila the Hun next to his allegedly conservative stablemate, the pathetic accommodationist, David Brooks. Writing about the most recent episode of South Park, which sought to elide post-9/11 proscriptions against joking about Islam by not depicting Mohammed, he writes:

These gimmicks then prompted a writer for the New York-based Web site revolutionmuslim.com to predict that Parker and Stone would end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for his scathing critiques of Islam. The writer, an American convert to Islam named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, didn’t technically threaten to kill them himself. His post, and the accompanying photo of van Gogh’s corpse, was just “a warning … of what will likely happen to them.”

This passive-aggressive death threat provoked a swift response from Comedy Central. In last week’s follow-up episode, the prophet’s non-appearance appearances were censored, and every single reference to Muhammad was bleeped out. The historical record was quickly scrubbed as well: The original “Super Best Friends” episode is no longer available on the Internet.

Sgt. York

Well, that’s America in 2010 — almost a full decade after we were attacked, we cower in fear of the people who attacked us; Sgt. York and Audie Murphy would be so proud.  Why, it would be as if, after the attack on Pearl Habor in 1941, the country suddenly banned all depictions of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, ceded Hawaii to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and went on a prolonged sushi orgy. (more…)

Thought experiment here, does anyone think this is offensive?

If that offended you please cease reading now and write me hate mail before you go to class at Bob Jones University, or file child-abuse charges against Jesus.  Humor is a way to cope with the problems of the world.  Only fundamentalists who take themselves way too seriously cannot understand this simple human concept. Fact is, most Christians are not offended this easily, nor would we threaten with death this guy:

Or even this guy: (more…)

How to lose friends and influence people:  Lenny Bruce, as played by Dustin Hoffman, on the moral evil of censorship, and what it does to the tongue of a free society. Something to think about as we move toward “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” on May 20.

Take that, “Comedy” Central.

While doing research for my upcoming book, tentatively titled Programming America (Harper Collins, due 2011), the inside story of the politically-motivated evolution of television from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Sex and the City and the very real bias of the industry against conservative content and creators, I interviewed Doug Herzog, President of MTV Networks Entertainment Group. He oversees Comedy Central, and he was kind enough to grant me some time and consent to taping our conversation on June 22, 2009.

During the course of that conversation, I asked Mr. Herzog about the network’s decision to censor South Park in April 2006 – in particular, the network shut down a segment that featured a cartoon image of Mohammed.

Here’s the audio:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

SHAPIRO: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the controversy that surrounded the South Park/Mohammed controversy. How did that come about and what was the real story there?

HERZOG: The real story was the story you know, which is that the guys wanted to depict Mohammed and the network wouldn’t let them. And that was the whole story. And while I think if we had to do it all over again we would do it differently, that was the decision we made at the time. And I regret it somewhat but I’ve made worse decisions in my life. (more…)