Eugene Volokh starts a discussion those Danish cartoons that offended so many Arab adherants of Islam thus.

"Racist" Cartoons:

A commenter questioned my questioning Art Spiegelman's statement that this cartoon is racist — not just critical of Islam, or at least of some strands of Islam, but racist (or perhaps more precisely "ethnically bigoted," though for our purposes we can view the two as roughly interchangeable):

Tagging any exaggerated features as an expression of bigotry would destroy the editorial cartoon industry. And yes, the way the features are exaggerated will be totally driven by the artist's personal political positions or biases. Given that the whole point of the endeavor is to set forth the cartoonist's personal political positions or biases, this is more than appropriate.

We also appreciate the professor's recognition that "ethnically bigoted" rather than "racist" is the correct term. However, we do not appreciate his conflating the terms anyway.