New York Times Cartoon Censorship Story - as seen by the right



You might expect conservative commentators to set aside rank partisanship in the face of rank censorship--especially when a "liberal" paper like The New York Times carries it out. And since I've always come out against campus "hate speech" strictures and other attempts to censor right-wing speech, you might expect to see a little gratitude coming from my fellow pundits--even if we don't plan to vote for the same Yalie this fall.



You might expect that members of the media would be concerned when one of their own is silenced as the result of a concerted campaign of harrassment and intimidation by political ideologues. The same thing, after all, could happen to them.



You might expect--but you'd be wrong. The pro-war, Bush apologist New York Press favors censorship--and says so on Page 2 this week.



The generic warbloggers have the usual argument:

I don't have any right to have my speech printed in the New York Times and neither does Rall.

Of course, no one has the "right" to be published anywhere. But only a simpleton, or a right-wing blogger typing in his parents' basement in Tennessee, would fail to see the danger to a free media in an editor who caves into rank political pressure when making editing decisions. An independent press must be responsive to its readers, but that doesn't mean running scared of a creator some 13 years after you started running his work because some people oppose his politics. If opinion mongers have to worry about getting fired every time they venture off the political mean, the next thing you know, the entire op-ed page will be covered with nothing but bland, middle-of-the-road moderates.



Oh.



Anyway, it's more important than ever that those who believe that singling out a creator for censorship simply because he opposes Resident Bush speak out. If you haven't done so already, please write the Times:



Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital



New York Times Letters to the Editor



Ombudsman Daniel Okrent



If the shoe were on the other ideological foot, if a strident conservative had been shitcanned from the Times website simply because liberals didn't like him or her, you can be damned sure that I'd still be urging you to speak up.