Daily News employees are bred to be contemptuous of the Philadelphia Inquirer's writing, reporters and particularly its management, but Paul Curci's lame editorial advocating censorship of the news has spurred me to deny my DNA and defend my Big Sister [Slant, "Bennett's Choice," Feb. 16, 2006].

The Danish cartoons in question have sparked riots, deaths and fatwas around the world, but according to Curci, American readers must be protected from seeing what caused these massive disturbances.

In fact, they are a diverse group of drawings with a variety of points about radical Muslim violence and about trying to draw a cartoon while looking over your shoulder wondering who might object. Unfortunately, most Americans haven't been given the chance to see them and judge for themselves whether the reaction fits the offense. When Iranians sponsored a competing competition of cartoons making fun of the Holocaust, Israeli papers immediately published the inflammatory, derogatory, insensitive cartoons. They were shown for exactly what they are.

I would have hoped that our "alternative" press would be kind enough to fulfill that role but, as it turns out, the Inquirer is the alternative press that treats its readers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as adults who can understand that the publication was not [meant] to inflame but to inform.

Furthermore, Curci's gratuitous jab about the Inquirer having lost its edge ignores the fact that it, and other Knight Ridder papers, were among the few that published articles, before we got into the Iraq debacle, that challenged the lies the administration was telling us about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq. It was not easy for KR journalists to buck the trend of the bigger papers whose erroneous reporting helped get us into the war in the first place. If that war weren't taking place, much of the hatred of all things Western would not be so high, and the cartoons might not have sparked such a huge furor.

America may be a religious country, but its tradition is also highly irreverent. As [Inquirer cartoonist] Tony Auth used to say, "Sacred cows make the best hamburger." Our local Library Company has a wonderful archive of incendiary images from America's past, including a series of cartoons done in the 1840s by a British cartoonist making vicious fun of this city's Quakers. Quakers survived and so did the country.

Curci's nanny-journalism credo would prohibit the City Paper from publishing any such images or written insults if they might offend believers of any faiths. They are, after all, believers and want the same protection from hurt feelings that he's offering the Muslims. It would only be fair given Curci's admonition that "consistency and integrity are the foundations for building trust."

I could go on, but I have to go draw a cartoon.

Sincerely,

Signe Wilkinson
Ticked-off editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Daily News