Friday, May 6, 2011

We're Ready For His Close Up

The National Post's lead editorial supports the decision to deep-six Osama's death portrait:
Humans are visual creatures, and respond emotionally to images of death and destruction. Recall, for instance, the widespread revulsion at the photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib, or even of the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammed. In the riots that emerged in the aftermath of the latter controversy, dozens of people died at the hands of frenzied mobs. Mr. Obama rightly seeks to avoid a repeat of such a scenario (even though, we hasten to mention, the blood would not be on his hands if violence were to occur).
Er, you mean we shouldn't release it out of fear? In that case haven't the jihadists (the violent ones, like Osama, and the stealthy ones, who are working to accustom us to sharia via non-violent methods) already won?

Mark Steyn, never one to submit to bossy ideologues, says release away:
So I think the argument for releasing the picture is to show that hey, we don’t care, this guy was a guy who attacked the United States, and here’s his corpse. There’s an element of the Mussolini from the lamppost thing that this whole episode could use.
Exactly. That's the money shot, and without it there's simply no satisfaction.

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