Ross Douthat Is Not Your Friend, Liberals
by tristero
Today in the NY Times, Ross Douthat wrote one more bigoted, despicable column. Since the subject is media intimidation by extreme Islamists, it appears that Douthat is on the side of free speech. He’s not, as Glenn Greenwald makes abundantly clear.
When the Mohammed cartoon flap was at its full, fatal height, rightwingers were able to bamboozle a lot of genuinely intelligent people into ignoring all the complexities and think about it as simply as unacceptable intimidation. So let’s be crystal clear:
The threats of violence against the Danish creators and publishers of the Mohammed cartoons was, and is disgraceful and unacceptable. Likewise the the successful censorship of South Park by islamist extremists is disgraceful and unacceptable. It is patently outrageous behavior.
That doesn’t mean, for even one second, that what Douthat has to say about these incidents has any value. Why? Because free speech is absolute for Douthat only when he agrees with it. But when it insults him or people he likes, at best Douthat is nowhere to be found. In this case, Douthat strings together one liberal-sounding cliche after another. Ah, but when the censors, and the threats of violence, come from christianists… silence. Or else, like the Republican congresscritters who found common cause with the madman who suicided his plane into IRS offices, Douthat suddenly finds unexpected nuance, or he blames “all sides”, or he socks that favorite punching bag of hacks, hippies, as he did when priests were caught raping boys.
Glenn is absolutely right. Douthat is no friend of free speech. He is anti-Muslim, and here he has simply appropriated liberal arguments to express his bigotry.