Hitchens Wipes The Floor With Yale's Excuses
Yale is publishing a book about the Mohammed cartoons -- without the Mohammed cartoons -- and Hitchens sets them straight on Slate:
The Aug. 13 New York Times carried a report of the university press' surrender, which quoted its director, John Donatich, as saying that in general he has "never blinked" in the face of controversy, but "when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question."Donatich is a friend of mine and was once my publisher, so I wrote to him and asked how, if someone blew up a bookshop for carrying professor Klausen's book, the blood would be on the publisher's hands rather than those of the bomber. His reply took the form of the official statement from the press's public affairs department. This informed me that Yale had consulted a range of experts before making its decision and that "[a]ll confirmed that the republication of the cartoons by the Yale University Press ran a serious risk of instigating violence."
So here's another depressing thing: Neither the "experts in the intelligence, national security, law enforcement, and diplomatic fields, as well as leading scholars in Islamic studies and Middle East studies" who were allegedly consulted, nor the spokespeople for the press of one of our leading universities, understand the meaning of the plain and common and useful word instigate. If you instigate something, it means that you wish and intend it to happen. If it's a riot, then by instigating it, you have yourself fomented it. If it's a murder, then by instigating it, you have yourself colluded in it. There is no other usage given for the word in any dictionary, with the possible exception of the word provoke, which does have a passive connotation. After all, there are people who argue that women who won't wear the veil have "provoked" those who rape or disfigure them ... and now Yale has adopted that "logic" as its own.
It was bad enough during the original controversy, when most of the news media--and in the age of "the image" at that--refused to show the cartoons out of simple fear. But now the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism, and it involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as what might hitherto have been thought of as our concept of moral responsibility.
Last time this happened, I linked to the Danish cartoons so that you could make up your own minds about them, and I do the same today. Nothing happened last time, but who's to say what homicidal theocrat might decide to take offense now. I deny absolutely that I will have instigated him to do so, and I state in advance that he is directly and solely responsible for any blood that is on any hands. He becomes the responsibility of our police and security agencies, who operate in defense of a Constitution that we would not possess if we had not been willing to spill blood--our own and that of others--to attain it. The First Amendment to that Constitution prohibits any prior restraint on the freedom of the press. What a cause of shame that the campus of Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants upon itself.
Yonder.
Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at August 18, 2009 12:04 AM
I just got into a very heated "discussion" w/ my husband about this. I am flooding his inbox with links and articles now. He'll have plenty to read tomorrow.
Truth at August 18, 2009 1:16 AM
Cowardice by a college institution...wow, big surprise.
Robert at August 18, 2009 4:48 AM
Seemingly coincidentally, a Yale official recently returned from a fund-raising trip to Saudi Arabia.
If this decision was made because of money, not cowardice, does that make it better or worse?
Pseudonym at August 18, 2009 5:11 AM
Heh. Right after reading about the cartoon incident, I got a picture of the Danish flag and hung it on the wall next to my desk at work. No one had to ask me why. They all knew.
Flynne at August 18, 2009 5:40 AM
Cowardice is bad enough...cowardice by people who endlessly congratulate themselves on their courage is much worse.
Academics and people in the "artistic community" love to talk about how courageous they are in doing things that offend ordinary Americans,Republicans, midwestern church ladies, etc etc. When it comes to something that might actually involve a very small amount of actual risk, it's another story.
I wonder if, in the small hours of the night, any of these people come face to face with what they really are.
david foster at August 18, 2009 7:07 AM
Ahh, Yale. Striking a blow for academic freedom!
brian at August 18, 2009 7:10 AM
I suppose that the lesbians do.
brian at August 18, 2009 7:11 AM
Christopher Hitchens is, ironically enough, a god to me.
Gordon at August 18, 2009 7:14 AM
Hold up just a sec guys, gotta quit vomiting here.
Way to let the terrorists win.
Gretchen at August 18, 2009 8:06 AM
A few Yalesters:
...U.S. Presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; current Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas; U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dean Acheson; Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry; recent Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman, Edmund Phelps, John Bennett Fenn, Raymond Davis Jr. and George Akerlof; Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Benet, Bob Woodward, John Hersey, Garry Trudeau, David McCullough and David M. Kennedy; authors Sinclair Lewis and Tom Wolfe; lexicographer Noah Webster; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; patriot and "first spy" Nathan Hale; ... Academy Award winners Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Holly Hunter, and Jodie Foster; "Father of American football" Walter Camp; ...Morgan Stanley founder Harold Stanley; ... academics Benjamin Silliman, Camille Paglia, Harold Bloom, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver; .. child psychologist Benjamin Spock; ... television commentators Dick Cavett and Anderson Cooper; public intellectuals William F. Buckley, Jr., David Gergen and Fareed Zakaria; Time Magazine co-founder Henry Luce; ...
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 18, 2009 8:13 AM
"This is the worst sort of masochism, and it involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as what might hitherto have been thought of as our concept of moral responsibility." - from the article linked at Slate
Newspeak
Gretchen at August 18, 2009 8:19 AM
Aside from the obvious cowardice, this is idiotic from a commercial POV. I might buy a book about the Mohammed cartoons because I am interested in civil liberties. However, there is no way I would buy this book because it would support cowardice not courage.
Perhaps, they can sell the X-Rated version online and devliver it in a plain brown wrapper.
Curtis at August 18, 2009 9:19 AM
"But now the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility"
Hitch has apparently been snoozing for the past several years. Does anyone remember the Miss World riots in Nigeria in 2002? Hundreds dead, the country in flames, the contestants forced to flee for their lives? So who was responsible for that mayhem? Was it the foaming-at-the-mouth Muslims who ran out into the streets hacking children to bits with machetes & tossing them into burning buildings, all over a BEAUTY PAGEANT? Not according to Red Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, who loudly & publicly declared that the beauty queens themselves were responsible for every drop of blood, and for offending Muslims:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2515189.stm
And he wasn't alone. I remember plenty of journalists, politicians, and feminists being eager to cast the pageant organizers & the beauty queens as being the real villains.
It's not "now". It was already then.
Martin at August 18, 2009 9:57 AM
Hmm, something I can agree with Hitchens on. Perhaps he's read Levant's book about his dealings with Canada's human rights commissions when he published the cartoons.
Sio at August 18, 2009 10:10 AM
To the best of my knowledge, Ezra Levant [http://ezralevant.com] has been the ONLY one in North America who dared publish the cartoons in a hardcopy publication.
Journalists have become a bunch of cowards!
Robert W. (Vancouver) at August 18, 2009 3:11 PM
Props to Amy's Canadian readership
Crid [CridComment @ gmail] at August 18, 2009 11:26 PM
Hmm. So far as "instigate"...
Do you all remember Mike Wallace pointing out to the Ayatollah Khomeini that Anwar Sadat had challenged Khomeini's actions - and that shortly thereafter, fundamentalist Muslims in the Egyptian Army machine-gunned Sadat in his chair, at a pass-in-review?
If Mike Wallace had kept his mouth shut, and not shown the Ayatollah he was being derided on worldwide TV, do you think that would have happened?
Did Wallace have a role in killing the Egyptian President?
Radwaste at August 21, 2009 4:52 PM
CJM, Mr. Obamas (I refuse to address him as President) mammy was a piece of white trash (to call her a slut would be a compliment) who got knocked up by a N THREE MONTHS before she married the bastard. He is a product of his upbringing & childhood associates, who include Marxists, Communists, racists, Muslims, & assorted other low-lifes. Our government is perfect for God-fearing people & wholly unsuited for any other, which means Mr. Obama is unsuitable to be President.
Rufus Grabert at August 9, 2011 3:53 PM
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