“What was that saying about a picture and 1,000 Words?”
February 5, 2006 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
“What Was That Saying About a Picture and 1,000 Words?”
by Julia King
February 6, 2006
By now we have all surely seen the photographs – the faces contorted with anger, the Danish flags in flames, the smoldering ruins of an embassy or two – but how many of us have seen the cartoons? The infamous caricatures of Muhammad the Prophet, you know – with the turban, the bomb, the fuse – the images that have been described repeatedly in American papers but never actually displayed?
It’s probably a good thing. It’s probably smart not to reprint cartoons that inspire people to set fires and call for people’s heads, but still, isn’t there something unsettling about the fact that virtually all major American media decided against publication?
The New York Times, the Superhero of newspapers, didn’t publish these drawings. The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times – they all decided readers didn’t need to see the drawings for themselves to get the whole story, to understand the situation. They decided a description of the cartoons would be sufficient.
In March of 2004, The New York Times thought I needed to see charred bodies hanging from a bridge in Falluja. For what it’s worth, I disagreed. But their defense of the photos was eloquent and self-confident so I considered the possibility that I was wrong — that I was simply too sensitive for the real world. But now they tell me I don’t need to see the cartoons depicting Muhammad. Again, I disagree. With some difficulty, I tracked down the caricatures on-line. To my democracy-hardened eyes the images were mild.
I understand depicting Muhammad on paper breaks Islamic law and for some that alone makes the images unacceptable. I’m sympathetic to those who feel disrespected, but I am frightened by the notion that religious anger is always righteous anger and that it holds a place high above other grievances.
I am a non-Christian living in a small, northern Indiana town. Participating in public life here means forever submitting to Christian prayer or resisting as the trouble maker. Jesus reigns not only in people’s homes and hearts, but in many of my daughter’s public school classrooms and in public meetings. Bow your head or make a stink. That’s always the choice. Sometimes I choose the former… and sometimes the latter. Neither is easy.
When the major American news outlets refused to publish the caricatures of Muhammad, the freest press on earth bowed its head instead of making a stink. It might be the wisest choice NOT to publish the images, but the argument that the images are somehow unnecessary to the telling of the story, or that they are fundamentally too offensive, is a disingenuous one.
I’m not calling for the cartoon images to appear in our national media, but I am calling for the truth. I’d like to hear just one major editor say, “Here’s the deal: we are afraid. It’s sad to admit, but violence sometimes speaks louder than reason. This is one of those times.”
