Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update: LaRose Pleads Guilty

* as expected for the better part of a week now, and suspected by some observers long before that, Pennsburg, Pennylsvania's Colleen LaRose changed her plea to guilty in a Philadelphia federal court on charges that she assisted in a plot to kill the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. Vilks is going to be described as a cartoonist in most of the wire articles; he's really more of an artist that made a piece of cartoon-inspired imagery, that of Muhammed's head on a dog's body. LaRose has gone by the I believe self-granted sobriquet of "Jihad Jane" in most of the press reports. She could face life in prison and a fee of $1 million; I'm not sure that I understand the fee part of it, but okay.

* this is only tangentially related, but it may be worth a look for some of you: the not-guilty verdict brought down on reporter Lars Hedegaard is used here to explore the ramifications and in many corners unpopularity of Danish hate speech laws, including a significant Danish cartoons aspect that you will certainly recall if you've been following the story in broad terms (or, if not, will be quickly reminded). There's a certain grinding aspect to reading articles because it's difficult this far removed from those media sources to properly suss out any political motivations and/or general biases, so as always be careful and processing what you're reading.
 
posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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