RE: PLANET OF THE APES WATCH

That's pretty pathetic on Sweeden's part. However, I consider the whole cartoon fiasco to be a positive step for several reasons: (1) it showed that at least some Europeans who have not barbered themselves clean on top have some backbone - no movements in Western societies get any traction until someone considered "mainstream embraces them; (2) it is making the media think about the limits of self-censorship when it comes to attacking Muslims - if there's one entity the Western media loves more than liberal causes, it's itself and it's fredom from censorship from outside sources; and (3) it ironically exposed many of the Muslims to be excactly the way the cartoon portrays them. I belive John Podhoretz at NRO had a great post last week, which essentially said that the most disturbing part of the Muslim uproar over the cartoons - think about it, worldwide protests over cartoons - was that violence and death arose from just cartoons. Imagine if, say, an EU leader took an official position that Islam was dangerous to Western society due to the ease with which its hard-eged elements can be co-opted by extremists to promote death and violence. What then, would there be mass public transit bombings throughout Europe? That's a scary thought.

Anyway, it appears that the PC powers in the media have finally put down the "cartoon rebellion" for now - by that I mean that those who favor printing the cartoons for their actual commentary on the state of Islam, going beyond printing them just for their news value (which the NYT even refused to do) have been silenced. But maybe it's more like the Boston Massacre of the simmering movement to end the Islam-coddling on both sides of the pond, that is, the first shot in a long upward struggle toward a return to reason.