“I plead you divulge”

Those the final words on a news story from Jaime Leygonier, an independent journalist in Cuba. Those words, for reasons I can’t quite explain, hit me hard when I read them earlier. Jaime reports the news not because his government protects his right to do so, but despite the fact that his government does everything in its power to stop him.

Think about it. American journalists are quick to slap each other on the backs when they criticize the American government, because they’re being so brave, “speaking truth to power,” as the saying goes. Of course, none of them can tell you when the last time the government cracked down on journalists en masse for telling the truth.

As a nice contrast, let’s compare Jaime’s bravery to those brave young souls at the Insurgent, a student newspaper at the University of Oregon, who bravely took a stand against the great Christian Menace. You see, the Oregon Commentator reprinted the Jyllands-Posten political cartoons that sparked so much violence a few months back, and the Insurgent, to make a point, published insulting cartoons about Christ*. The Insurgent apparently has no web presence, so the Commentator scanned and posted the issue for its online readers to see (Warning: The scanned Insurgent issue has images that are potentially very offensive.)

Apparently, they did this to “show Christians what it was like” to have their religion insulted. You know, because the faith of Christians is never mocked, so we have absolutely no idea what that’s like.

Anyway, I know there are all sorts of embargoes about trade with Cuba, but I will happily trade Castro 20 of our journalists and journalism students for every one of his country’s independent journalists that he chooses to export to us.

* Incidentally, as far as I can tell, the Insurgent’s Christ cartoons haven’t got any value as commentary, unlike the Mohammed cartoons. While you might argue whether the point that the Mohammed cartoons made was valid or not, you can’t deny that they were commentary. Despite the lack of any redeeming social value from the Christ cartoons, you might note a distinct lack of death threats coming from this blog.

Heck, you won’t even see this blog supporting any attempt to censor the Insurgent. To be honest, I imagine that the shame that they’ll feel when they, you know, grow up and are still haunted by the existence of these cartoons is worse punishment than any censorship could ever be.

In the words of TallDave4, a commenter at Protein Wisdom:

As a Christian, I’m deeply offended by this obscene mockery of my Lord and Savior. So in response, I’m going to unleash my religion’s most powerful weapon:

I forgive them.

Just one small addition to that. I’m also praying for them.

** [Update: I understood that the Insurgent and Commentator were two separate student newspapers, but it was pointed out to me (see comments) that my original post may have been confusing, so I've tried to make it clearer. The original version of the paragraph is included below:

As a nice contrast, let's compare Jaime's bravery to those brave young souls at the Oregon insurgent (Warning: that article links to some offensive images), who bravely took a stand against the great Christian Menace. You see, the Oregon Commentator (whose article is linked above) reprinted the Jyllands-Posten political cartoons that sparked so much violence a few months back, and the Insurgent, to make a point, published insulting cartoons about Christ*.

Hope that the revised version above makes things a bit clearer.]