THE TELEGRAPH: America's failure to rise up against the intimidation of cartoonist Molly Norris and South Park animators is a sad sign, says Alex Spillius.
The trouble with terror is that it can be terrifying. Just ask Molly Norris, a cartoonist from Seattle.
As far as we know, she hasn't been explicitly threatened by Islamic extremists, but evidently she feared she might be.
Her error was to post on her website an illustration with many different household objects with speech bubbles all claiming to be the likeness of Mohammed, including a tea cup, a domino and a box of pasta. It was part of a mock campaign to dedicate May 20 as "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!"
Ms Norris pinged her cartoon to a few bloggers and talked to local radio, saying she [sic] it was "a cartoonist's job to be non-PC."
Quite reasonably, the radio man asked her "are you sure you want to do this?"
Bold as you like, she replied: "Yeah, I want to water down the targets ..."
Ms Norris had launched her pretend promotion in response to the treatment by Comedy Central of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, the satirical animated show.
Its 200th anniversary episode featured a parade of celebrities and religious figures it had parodied over the years. Aware of the offence that depicting Mohammed could cause to Muslims, the show's characters debated how to represent the prophet, eventually deciding to hide him in a bear costume.
That prompted a New York-based website, RevolutionMuslim.com, to warn Parker and Stone that "what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh". >>> Alex Spillius in Washington | Saturday, May 01, 2010
