Well, Call Me Bill O'Reilly

OK - those of you who know me know that I'm not down with people who bash "political correctness" in order to tar-and-feather people who enter into dialogue with a little bit of ol'-fashioned politeness and cultural sensitivity. It's a manipulative, bullying posture, a favorite tool of white guys pissed off because their power share in America (and elsewhere) has dropped from 99 to 90 percent.

That having been said, can we not have any apologies for people who burn down embassies because of editorial cartoons?

I'm aware of the deep offensiveness of these images, doctored up by a Danish newspaper looking for a cheap - but, presumably, controllable - source of controversy. It seems worth mentioning that I've seen them, and they're not funny. Nevertheless, how hard is it to understand that once a government starts to censor images based on their religious appropriateness, we lose any sort of ability to stop zealots everywhere from shutting up people whose views they don't share. Laugh now, but wait 'til Brent Bozell takes over the FCC and you can't watch South Park anymore.

Also - cutting off trade with Denmark because of the cartoons, as Iran recently did? Wow. So very, very dumb. The Danish government and the Danish people merely agreed to a social contract that would allow someone to say (or draw) something offensive. Many countries on Earth have set themselves up in this fashion. The lack of a reachable target - in this case, the douchebag (douchebags?) who drew the cartoons in the first place - doesn't mean that you should just go ahead and slam the entire country with an embargo. Although it's hard to imagine what the withdrawal of Iranian goods will mean to the Danes anyway.

Lost in all of the controversy is the fact that Denmark, which hasn't seen much controversy since the events recounted in Hamlet, has all of the sudden become Public Enemy #1. It's like the quiet, studious kid in class has abruptly started drawing tits on the blackboard when the teacher turns away.