Seattle Cartoonist’s “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” Goes Viral
Seattle Cartoonist Molly Norris's original cartoon.
Comedy Central recently censored an episode of South Park after the creators received death threats from a radical Muslim website. The group was upset over an episode that had aired the week prior, depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris, disappointed in the censorship, created a satirical cartoon calling for May 20th to be “Everybody Draw Mohammed (sic) Day.”
On April 23rd she spoke with KIRO's Dave Ross. His first question was: “are you sure you want to do this?” At the time she replied: “yeah, I want to water down the targets … as a cartoonist I just felt so much passion about what had happened, I wanted to counter Comedy Central’s message about feeling afraid. “ Apparently that fear has caught up with Molly Norris, as she is now backing away from the entire enterprise. Helped in part by popular bloggers and a Facebook campaign, the cartoon went from local readership to a viral internet sensation over the course of the week.
Norris’s website now contains multiple disclaimers distancing herself from “Draw Mohammed Day” as well as a new comic depicting the artist with thought bubbles that read “I have hit some kind of gigantic nerve!” and “I’m so freaked out that I’m not even drinking my regular 4 pots of coffee per day!” The creators of the Facebook campaign have also decided to back down, declaring in a post on the group’s page that it was time to “be super-nice to everyone! Enough of this drawing nonsense.”
It remains unclear if Molly Norris or the Facebook group creators have has received direct threats on their lives, but perhaps the whole episode can best be best summed up by yet another cartoon; The Simpsons. In the most recent opening credits, Bart writes on the chalkboard: “South Park - We’d Stand Beside You If We Weren’t So Scared.”
