Two Wrongs Do Make A Right

Tim Cavanaugh | February 8, 2006

Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose wants to publish the Iranian paper Hamshahri's upcoming Holocaust cartoons. "My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them," Rose tells CNN.

Hamshahri yesterday announced a contest calling on cartoonists to depict the Holocaust, with art director Farid Murtazawi saying, "They published caricatures insulting the Prophet Mohammed with the excuse of freedom of expression... We will see whether they do what they say; whether they will reprint these pictures of the holocaust." One of Murtazawi's cowering henchmen might want to tell him that Holocaust cartoons not only get printed in the west but win Pulitzer prizes.

Is Flemming Rose a tool of the neocons? is Jyllands-Posten a right-wing rag? I don't know, but I wish daily papers in America were half as willing to provoke controversy over ideas (especially when they do it with beautiful full-page, full-color spreads).