Published 28 Apr 10

International Desk

By Abigail R. Esman
World Defense Review columnist

Why The Battle Over South Park Matters

Just over five years ago, a young man by the name of Steven Vincent left his home in New York for Basra.

He never returned.

A freelance journalist, Vincent had traveled to Iraq before, producing articles for Harpers, The Christian Science Monitor, and others, as well as authoring a book, In the Red Zone, about his experiences there. In Basra, he planned to complete notes for a second book while pursuing other freelance assignments, including one for the New York Times.

But only days after the Times article appeared, Vincent and his translator, Nour Al-Khal, were kidnapped by militant infiltrators of the Basra police, bound, gagged, driven to the edge of town, and beaten.

"Now," the captors said to Vincent, "you'll know what to write."

Whether Vincent would eventually have curbed his pen or not, we will never really know: his kidnappers shot him and Al-Khal in the back, killing him instantly. Miraculously, Al-Khal survived.

I doubt, however, even having experienced the beatings, the threats, the terror, that Steven Vincent would ultimately have stilled his pen. I believe he would have continued to expose the truth, to uncover both the evil and the good taking place in Iraq and elsewhere in the world, no matter what the cost.

In every sense and meaning of the word, Steven Vincent was a hero, a man of courage and conviction, and the knowledge of what is right and true.

Last week, the news hit the wires that writers for the satirical series "South Park" had been similarly threatened in a statement issued on the web site of a group that calls itself "Revolution Muslim." The show's producers, citing "security concerns," succumbed: portions of an episode deemed "insulting to Muslims" were removed, and the segment aired without them.

Call it "castration via Internet," if you will.

This was by no means the first such incident since Steven Vincent's death in 2005. Even such lofty institutions as Yale University Press have cowered and capitulated when faced with warnings such as these. In fact, to the contrary, such threats seem to be increasing in frequency and bravado.

And why not? Most of the time, as with the "South Park" episode, it works. As the National Review noted, "Comedy Central is added to Yale University Press, Random House, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the list of Western institutions that will now let Islamist extremists make decisions about what they can show and say." (See the NPR story.)

What I mean to say here is that too many, it seems, fail to understand this thing we call (or used to call, before the term, too, was censored from the official lexicon) "the war on terror." This is not a war fought simply on the battlefields, but in our private lives; what we read, the news that we are privy to, what we watch on TV, see on the stages of London and Broadway. We are no longer, in the West, a people of a free and honest press, the makers of a free and uninhibited art, the writers of freely-imagined tales. Our metaphors have been corrupted. Our allegories have been amputated at the knee.

And it is our own fault.

While we debate the numbers of troops to send into Afghanistan, and the security measures to institute at airports, and the budget requirements of the military, and the geography of tribunals, where are the programs aimed at fighting the imprisonment of truth? Where are the battlefields, and with what weapons, do we defend the freedom of the arts, the future of dance, of song, of laughter?

Not too long ago, in 1988, the singer Harry Belafonte observed, "You can cage the singer, but not the song."

Let the music play.

— Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning author-journalist who divides her time between New York and The Netherlands. In addition to her column in World Defense Review, her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Salon.com, Esquire, Vogue, Glamour, Town & Country, The Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic and many others. Her book, Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West, will be published in May, 2010 by Praeger.

Visit Esman on the web at abigailesman.com.

© 2010 Abigail R. Esman

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NOTE: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, and do not represent the opinions of World Defense Review and its affiliates. WDR accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy or inaccuracy of the content of this or any other story published on this website. Copyright and all rights for this story (and all other stories by the author) are held by the author.

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