Am I the only person responding who feels enormously conflicted about this?

I happen to agree that censorship caused by religious fundamentalists who seek to bully the rest of society is a bad thing, something to be avoided whenever possible. But then I look at the powderkeg of France, and this happening so closely after the October riots, and I ask myself:

if unjustly firing one news editor can tangibly save lives, is it so bad?

Will it save lives? It may. Besides, the people who might say that intolerance and censorship must be resisted at all costs probably don't live in neighborhoods where they might be victimized by such violence.

It's a little like, say, having a bumper sticker that says support the troops but freaking out when your 17 year old son says he wants to join the military, perhaps so you can be proud of him. Would this editor getting fired bother you so much if you were a poor white person living in a seedier neighborhood in Marseille?

In the long term, some things, plural, have to change. If there are five million Arabs in France, they are a part of France, now, and it doesn't seem right to say all the change needs to be made by them. The racism Arabs face in the west is real, not just a made-up grievance.

But by that same token, the kind of Islam that fundamentalists want to impose is ultimately untenable. Believe it or not, ultimately I feel hopeful for the future of Islam, in the west and elsewhere. And ironically, I think the main reason I feel hopeful is I look at how far European Christian society has come since the days when we burned heretics.

the prof says that in the past few years she has

"interviewed 300 Muslim leaders in Western Europe about their views and solutions for the integration of Islam."

How about the readers who attack her? You seem to assert that you know for a fact that Islam is irredeemably depraved and brutish, which seems to be what many of you are doing, even if you're not doing it in so many words.

People shouldn't threaten to kill people for speech, even inflammatory speech. I readily agree with that. But when you suggest that you know that a billion muslims constitute a monolithic society, you just don't know that, just like you don't know to what degree the cartoons in question are inflammatory. Whenever westerners, or even Arab-Americans, suggest they have their finger on the pulse of Islam, I for one am skeptical. Americans and other westerners often can't even see their own casual racism.

Look, for example, at how slight the coverage has been of the Salam-Boccaccio98 sinking on Friday. I applaud Salon for running "Rotten Judgement in Denmark," but have to wonder if Salon would have given the shipwreck more coverage if it had been carrying mostly Europeans. And no, it's not just Salon. The press is accustomed to covering Muslims being angry, so that's deemed more newsworthy.

Speaking of ships, remember the Maine as Americans once said, in a different context. Is it so implausible that maybe some people in Europe are stoking this fire on purpose because they want to introduce anti-immigrant legislation, or, over here, because they want a war with Iran and Syria? Likewise, isn't it possible that when Bush and his minions casually talk about waging war on one country after another, perhaps the rulers of those countries feel compelled to stir up Anti-US sentiment to shore up their power, fearing the would-be Chalabis in their midst? Are these demonstration all that "spontaneous?"If you know, how do you know?

When I saw 30 seconds or so of tv ads/trailers for the new Panther it was immediately obvious that it would be unfunny. The very fact that Kevin Kline, who is infinitely funnier than Martin, was cast in a supporting role immediately demonstrates how unaware the moviemakers were.

Martin was funny in the Jerk and in the original SNL, but that was a very long time ago, and he's been coasting on half a dozen or so tired mannerisms for at least the past 15 years, maybe 20. Comedians don't get bad so much as they get lazy, especially when they look around and realize that they'll sometimes get adulation even when it's no longer earned.

MacGregor is only half right. Yes, authenticity and relating to others is important, but how do you separate that from contentless rhetoric? When Tim Kaine spoke after Bush, he prattled on about how we can do better, echoing Kerry's '04 line. But do these jokers ever talk about

1.needing to stem the tide of deregulation that has helped create the conditions that help create Enron-style debacles,

2.progressive taxation,

3.federalizing our healthcare system? Sometimes the way to fight is to attack head-on. Many Americans mistrust democrats because of their namby-pamby unwillingness to identify what they stand for;

instead we get this insipid "we can do better" song-and-dance.

"Of course, this show has Mamet's sticky fingerprints all over it, from the unrealistically sharp and somewhat leaden dialogue to the melodramatic, suffering-hero scenarios."

someone finally says it! to paraphrase Donne, "ask not for whom the metronome annoyingly tick-tocks, for it annoyingly tick-tocks for thee!"