Would you also be calling for a boycott if it were an Andres Serrano coffee table book containing reproductions of "Piss Christ" that Borders and Waldenbooks refused to stock?

If I were those two booksellers, I'd certainly consider it after the Christian Right's response to Martin Scorsese's heartfelt movie about Jesus's personal struggles with his dual nature. Catholic and conservative Christian groups demonstrated against The Last Temptation of Christ with petitions, phone campaigns, radio broadcasts, and street protests, leading more than more than 3,500 theaters nationwide to refuse to screen it.

Free speech indeed. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The enemies of free speech already KNOW their tactics can succeed.

At any rate, the massive fines being levied by our own government on media recently for things like wardrobe malfunctions, swearing and implied nudity/sex are a lot more disturbing. Those just happen to be *christian* attempts at quashing free speech, so they make it under the radar.

I don't fault stores for carrying books that I disagree with. Their job is to respond to the demand. Unfortunately, the demand is usually oposite of what I'm looking for. I collect rare and obscure horror films prior to 1970. There's nothing more upsetting than going to BestBuy and searching for some rare gem and finding shelves stocked with "The Best Of Oprah".

Danish cartoons: Jyllands-Posten publishes article with illustrations of Mohammed, most innocuous, a few defamatory. Violent protests break out in many parts of the world. Vandalism and killings ensue. Many protesters call for the deaths of the cartoonists. A few governments call for the Danish government to take actions against Jyllands-Posten. Many stage boycotts against products sold by Danish firms that have nothing to do with the cartoons. An American magazine chooses to put one of the defamatory pictures on the cover of its current issue. Two book chains normally sell the magazine in question, but decline to stock the current issue, citing not any threatened boycott but fear of the sometimes-deadly violence of the cartoonoclasts.

Last Temptation of Christ: Martin Scorsese directs a film that defames Jesus Christ. Two notable criticisms are the film Jesus' denial of His omniscience ("God only talks to me a little at a time and tells me as much as I need to know") and sinlessness ("I'm a liar. A hypocrite. I'm afraid of everything. I never tell the truth") - quotes from IMDb. Many Christians engage in the time-honored American tradition of spirited but peaceful protest. Wikipedia has to go all the way across the Atlantic to find an example of protest violence, involving the time-honored French tradition of a molotov cocktail. Some call for boycotts against participating theaters and MCA, which distributed the film; no calls for boycotts against innocent bystanders uninvolved with the film.

Yep, the two are just aliike.

Uh, before you come down too hard on Borders (along with a raft of others doing likewise) you might want to check out Vanderleun's biting letter from the Borders/Wanden Books CEO laying out a few harsh realities of the situation from their point of view. The letter hit yesterday evening and was picked up by the NY Times just in time for you-know-what.

Spoof or not, it drives home a few good points. In any case, if you aim to take a stand, get ready to counter the various arguments in the letter.

JohnS--First of all, Christians did not start violent riots over Piss Christ or Last Temptation. As Zach points out, Borders seems to be caving in not out of sympathy with Muslims that they have a legitimate grievance against the cartoons--or even concerns about a Muslim boycott of their stores, but rather out of fear of violence.

Oh sorry, I thought this post was about "freedom of speech!"

Somehow, those 35,000 theaters that refused to show the "Last Temptation of Christ" get a free pass from you free speech nuts -- and they were only threatened with Conservative Christian phone campaigns, radio broadcasts, and street protests! Borders Books gets weak in the knees over the thought of Islamic improvised explosive devices hidden in the New Releases, Best Sellers, and More sections and you free speech nuts go banannas and wanna call for boycotts!

Well, it's time to draw the line. Yeah, that's what we need more of from Corporate America, "high-minded stance[s]!"

Not just high-minded stances, either. American corporations must stop their cowering, they must stand in opposition, they must take the fight directly to the enemy! I'm sure there's gotta be one strip mall left in Iraq. I demand that Borders Books open a lonely outpost of freedom there, a Baghdad Borders that fearlessly stocks Free Inquiry. Borders will need a store manager there, BTW. Anyone interested?

Freedom of speech/broadcast/movie showing means freedom from government censorship or violent mob force, not freedom from boycott or freedom from fisking the morality of what it chooses to include or exclude from its product line.

Nobody was making demands on the government to prevent the airing of Last Temptation, and except for the molotov incident in Paris, nobody was inflicting bodily harm on anyone making money off the film. Also, nobody was boycotting firms uninvolved with the movie.

The cartoonoclast protests have involved calls for government censorship, significant levels of death and destruction, and boycotts against Danish firms uninvolved with Jyllands-Posten. (Like boycotting Coca-Cola and Pepsi over stuff the New York Times prints.)

This is SO confusing! Let me see if I've got this right.

We should boycott a bookseller for capitulating to religious extremists who stifle free speech with threats of violence.

But not those theaters that capitulated to religious extremists who stifled free speech with threats of peaceful protests.

Please correct me if I've got this wrong.

I, for one, didn't jump into the boycott chorus. (Which would have been pointless since I've never seen a Borders bookstore.) Self-preservation is not an immoral motivation.

My point is that the vast majority of the anti-Last Temptation protests are compatible with civil society, whereas a large proportion of the cartoonoclast protests are not.

I worked for Waldenbooks during the infamous Salman Rushdie craze of the late 80s over The Satanic Verses. Waldenbooks did not take any pressure from any group about carrying the book or displaying it; they did what they wanted to do. By the same token, they also carried "The Satanic Bible" despite this particular location in a fairly conservative rural community. Their sales dictated their policy.

Publicity fuels sales - if nobody buys the book, it won't be put back on the shelves. From what I heard about the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ," the conservative right's call for a boycott got more people interested in what all the fuss was about, when if they had just left it alone, people would have decided whether it was a good movie or not and chosen whether they were or weren't going to pay money to see it.

Instead of criticizing what other people write, we should all be more focused on producing good quality literature and cinema offerings. And someone ought to remind those who take such offense at a cartoon or two that A) sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you, and B) if people want to become American citizens, they have to master the whole freedom of speech thing: I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.