Bradbury's World...here now....

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I wonder how they reconcile the last sentence, with the first two in this paragraph?

from the article...

"We absolutely respect our customers' right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment," Bingham said. "And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We've just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores."

Double speak.
 
Not double-speak.

It's more along the lines of "you are free to read what you wish, but we are free to choose not to support controversial ideas if we wish".

It's the same with porn. You can't force a store to carry it, but you also can't force a store NOT to carry it (though you can force the store not to make it available to those under 18).

In this case, the stores have chosen that there is content that they do not wish to sell. You are free to shop elsewhere now and in the future.
 
You think maybe I might walk into those stores and find something as offensive to Christianity as those cartoons are to Islam? I guarantee it. Think they will stop selling it because it offends Christians? I guarantee not.

Double speak to be polite. Hypocrisy, to be honest.
 
Or, perhaps it's not hypocrisy. Maybe they are just gutless. Cowards. Simpering yellow bellies, a possibility raised by this quote:

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday."

So, I wonder... are they cowards, or hypocrites? Either way, they've chosen, of their own free will, to give terrorists a victory.

Needless to say, two of my favorite stores have lost my patronage. There are other bookstores around, ones which don't encourage terroristic violence by rewarding it.
 
I can't agree, Mark. This isn't choosing not to carry a whole category like porn - its not even choosing not to carry a single magazine at all - its singling out a single issue of a magazine they normally carry.

If they're going to carry the magazine, they should carry ALL issues of the magazine. They should have come out and said, "We won't carry this one because we don't want violent protesters charging our store."

As to Joe's point - he has one. When you hear about "Christians" making violent protests (abortion clinics for example) you're hearing about fringe radical behavior. There have been enough members of the Muslim community to react violently to these cartoons that one can hardly blame the chains for being concerned.
 
Joe Williams said:
Or, perhaps it's not hypocrisy. Maybe they are just gutless. Cowards. Simpering yellow bellies, a possibility raised by this quote:

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday."
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I think the wording they chose is more cowardly than the choice not to carry the magazines. Choosing to do something you know has a high risk of causing violent repercussions is only rarely appropriate to call bravery. Stupidity would be the more normal choice of words.
 
I think if they were forced to carry the mag despite their corporate wishes you would be singing a different tune.

Farenheit 451 indeed.

So Wal Mart doesn't carry Playboy, and cleanses lyrics on their CD's. That is much more upsetting to me :D

What happened to the free market embraced by all those conservatives out there? :rolleyes:

Here's a test. Someone post those cartoons on this forum. And then time how long they stay up. Then we can talk about censorship.
 
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alaskaflyer said:
Farenheit 451 indeed.

So Wal Mart doesn't carry Playboy, and cleanses lyrics on their CD's. That is much more upsetting to me :D
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Aha, but that is the point. Wal-Mart has a policy that has been in place and consistent. This case, the store has made a new policy, so to speak, and said "we will not carry this issue of this magazine." It would be akin to Wal-Mart carrying Playboy, but not the one with the blue eyed redhead because she might be too controversial.

As for the CD's - does Wal-Mart actually "cleanse" the CD's, or does the artist/recording company do it in order to assure that Wal-Mart will sell it? Again, not the same issue. If they all of a sudden said they would not sell one particular Kinky Freidman CD, but all the others, maybe...but they don't sell any of them.

Apples and Pomegranties.
 
Okay, let me see if I get this right. What Borders is saying is basically this:

1. Islam does not value peace enough to not kill/burn/pillage a bookstore because of some very poorly drawn foreign language cartoons.

2. Violent acts of rioting are the preferred method of social change (Sorry, Dr. King, times they are a changin').

I have seen the cartoons, and they are pretty lame myself. The one that is probably the one that I see as the most "offensive" is the one with horns coming out of Mohammad's head. How many times has Jesus Christ been depicted as a devil, or as The Devil? How many times has Christ been slandered in our own media? Do Christians earn the right to go out and kill/burn/pillage? No we don't, but you draw Mohammad leading a donkey through the dessert and it's goobye Borders: Books and Music!

Look for the drawing online, it should take you about twenty-nine hundreths of a second to locate an english translated version (extra points if you know which search engine this is).

It's like in Star Wars, the original, when C3PO is playing Chewbacca in that chess-type game. Han Solo tells him "You'd better let the wookie win..." Why is that? "Because a droid won't pull your arms off when he loses!"

It isn't really about censorship, Borders just doesn't want it's arms pulled off. It wants neither the burning nor the boycotting of its stores.

Wouldn't it be funny if Christians boycotted the stores containing things that we found offensive? Wouldn't it be sad if we burned the stores like Muslim rioters?

--Matt
 
The rogue said:
Wouldn't it be funny if Christians boycotted the stores containing things that we found offensive?
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You mean like the Christian boycotts of Disneyland (&World), ABC TV, Ford, etc?? Hilarious!

People are always boycotting something. Eh, well its their right to go where they want.

Borders would have been better to not have self-censored and jsut let it be known they will not tolerate illegal acts targeted at the infomration in their stores. Much more consitant that way.
 
smigaldi said:
You mean like the Christian boycotts of Disneyland (&World), ABC TV, Ford, etc?? Hilarious!

People are always boycotting something. Eh, well its their right to go where they want.

Borders would have been better to not have self-censored and jsut let it be known they will not tolerate illegal acts targeted at the infomration in their stores. Much more consitant that way.
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Have not seen fires and shootings at House of the Mouse (east or West). No storming of ABC by violent protesters. No bombings of Fords and Ford pants. Etc. etc. backatcha Scott. There is absolutely no comparison in this region of the time-space continuum.
 
F.W. Birdman said:
Have not seen fires and shootings at House of the Mouse (east or West). No storming of ABC by violent protesters. No bombings of Fords and Ford pants. Etc. etc. backatcha Scott. There is absolutely no comparison in this region of the time-space continuum.
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I did not say anything about there being riots at the mouse house nor did I infer any. I edited out the section from the post I quoted about riots and only addressed the boycotts.

I did not compare the Christians with the Muslim I only pointed out that they are boycotting certain things as they have a right to. The original author was apparrently unware that certain Christian groups are engaged in boycotts. I gave him information that he was apprently lacking.

You are looking to cause trouble when my entire statement was truthful and factual. The last sentace I think also shows that we are in agreement about this entire issue.
 
Joe I didn't interpret his remark as a slam on Christians but as a slam on the small subset of Christians that happen to be boycotting Disney et al. To my knowledge, and I may be mistaken but I don't think so, the percentage of Christians actively engaged in any boycott based on religious offensiveness is so small that it is a gross mischaractarization to suggest that Christians are boycotting anything as a group.
 
Greebo said:
Joe I didn't interpret his remark as a slam on Christians but as a slam on the small subset of Christians that happen to be boycotting Disney et al. To my knowledge, and I may be mistaken but I don't think so, the percentage of Christians actively engaged in any boycott based on religious offensiveness is so small that it is a gross mischaractarization to suggest that Christians are boycotting anything as a group.
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It was not a slam nor intended as one at all. THe autor stated that he thought " Wouldn't it be funny if Christians boycotted the stores containing things that we found offensive?" I pointed out that there aready are boycotts by Christians and that it is their right if they want to do that. I passed no judgement on their actions yet for that I was labled a Nazi by Joe.
 
Like Goebbels, you told part of the truth to give the rest of your post a veneer of believability.
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This thread is done.
 
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