A snip from Mick Hartley's lengthy muse on the subject of cartoons:

And TigerHawk points to an op-ed (pay only) by Irshad Manji in the Wall Street Journal. Here's a bit he quotes:

Tihs controversy is a great lesson in the continuing danger of Fear-based societies, where the highs will always be higher and lows lower as public reaction is bound to be cynically manipulated for nefarious purposes and the power of the great semi-interested, moderate-tending middle is chained and silent. Critics will point out that Western nations also have their problems -- witness the insane protesters in London -- but the danger from numbers is far less, and in any case tends to come from people who's political being was formed in a Fear-based setting.

Again, burning embassies give us an object lesson in the value of the spread of freedom.

I'll admit, one could spend some time musing on how the Western media fits in. As a commenter of Mick's points out: