Hmmm.

It looks like James Frey has been cut loose by his publisher.

I wonder if Knopf’s Sonny Mehta will come to his rescue, as he did for Bret Easton Ellis back in the day when Simon & Schuster cut Ellis loose because his novel American Psycho was “in very bad taste.”

“Mr. Mehta’s decision to buy the book for Vintage angered women’s groups, some of which have called for a boycott of the novel. The Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women called it ‘a how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women.’”

–NYT, Feb. 18, 1991

Note that this controversy erupted some two years after Khomeini’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

So-called “soft censorship” has been around for a long time.

May the debate flower and blossom.

Writing in the Village Voice, Nat Hentoff makes an astonishing claim about the complicity of Middle Eastern leaders in the “cartoon jihad,” as a means of “criminalizing insults of Islam and its prophets.” Hentoff writes:

The Organization of Islamic Conference’s goal is to inhibit criticism of Islamic jihadism by threats of violence.

He quotes a letter written to Kofi Annan by the director of a human rights group with experience in the Sudan:

“The role of the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), representing 57 Muslim states, in creating a climate for violent confrontation over the cartoons [was shown when] the OIC set the stage for anti–free speech demonstrations at its extraordinary summit in Mecca in December 2005. The Muslim states resolved, through these many demonstrations, to pressure through a program of joint Islamic action, international institutions, including the U.N., to criminalize insults of Islam and its prophet. [Emphasis added.]

“In its final resolution, in Mecca, the OIC focused on the satirical caricatures of Muhammad (published in Denmark in September), which are now being used as a pretext for acts of violence.

“On the 4th of February—?the day the mob violence commenced—the Organization of Islamic Conference described publication of the caricatures as acts of ‘blasphemy.’ Blasphemy is punishable by death, according to Shariah law.”

It’s unclear when Kofi Annan received that letter. According to Hentoff, however, Annan bought in to the OIC’s “proposal mandating that a revised U.N. Human Rights Council ‘prevent instances of intolerance discrimination, incitement of hatred and violence . . . against religions, prophets, and beliefs.’ ”

Hentoff points out:

This would enforce censorship by U.N. members and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations there) against purported defamation of Muslims in print and other forms of speech.

Nat Hentoff, a writer and jazz connoisseur, is a well-known First Amendment absolutist and civil libertarian. He rightly labels these non-partisan issues. (I would call them supra-partisan, because they’re more important.) As an example:

And the conservative Free Congress Foundation (Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO) — to which I am indebted for a weekly update on our diminishing privacy — makes a liberty-saving point in questioning the care and accountability of the FBI’s targeting groups such as Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: “Make no mistake, the Free Congress Foundation is adamantly opposed to the agendas of both groups and has little respect for their tactics. They push the boundaries. However, put another administration in power — one bent on enforcing political correctness — and it will no longer be Greenpeace or PETA that is under the microscope.

“It will be property-rights groups, pro-lifers, defenders of traditional values, Second Amendment stalwarts.” [emphasis added]

Hentoff is a freethinker.

In seeking allies in his defense of freedom of speech, he even meets with conservative groups–what a concept! talking to the enemy!

Kudos to Hentoff for his persistent efforts.