STEVE CHAPMAN — AKA DADDY WARBLOGS is pretty ticked off at the Blogosphere (including me) for not rising to Robert Fisk’s defense. (No, there’s no irony here — read his post and scroll up to read a followup).

I certainly agree with Chapman that it’s bad to threaten people for their speech. Perhaps it’s because I don’t take actors seriously, but I didn’t take John Malkovich’s statement any more seriously as a threat than I took Alec Baldwin’s comments about leaving the United States if Bush were elected seriously as a promise. I’d certainly oppose Fisk’s being silenced, but — leaving aside Malkovich’s comments — he’s mostly being ridiculed. It’s true, as Chapman says, that my commentary on Fisk’s piece didn’t go into much detail. But, honestly, can you really accuse the blogosphere of not dissecting Fisk’s statements thoroughly enough? At some point, it ceases being worth the trouble. What struck me about Fisk’s piece was the whining self-pity, and that’s what I was responding to. And I think it’s a bit over the top to say that having my family killed would be trivial by comparison to 9/11, so it’s wrong for me to suggest that nasty email is trivial. I’m sure that Chapman doesn’t mean his language as a threat to silence me. And I don’t think the blogosphere’s comments about Fisk fall into that category either. Nor, for that matter, do I think that Malkovich’s comments qualify as a threat, any more than Jane Fonda’s remarks about wishing that she had a B-52 in her sights mean that she planned to come back to America and murder servicemen. He’s an actor, for chrissake and they tend to be overdramatic.

UPDATE: Reader Ross Fitzgibbon provides some context on the Malkovich threat:

On a Station in Britain called Five Live, [Fisk] was basically repeating what he said in that column you linked to the other day, ie poor him, nasty John Malkovich, nasty Americans, Brave little Fisky. Anyhow after one of the studio guests whose name escapes me accused malkovich of inciting racial hatred, (Robert Fisk counts as a race?!), and Fisk had left, a student who was at the Cambridge Union address where J.M. made his comments called in with the true story.

Apparently in a Q&A session after [Malkovich’s] talk an audience member asked whom he would most like to fight to the death, to which JM replied Fisk or George alloway. This is the death threat that Fisk was blubbing about. The presenters sounded suprised by this as they had only heard the version that Fisk has been pumping out. Still something struck me, [Fisk] made the point that the “Afghan refugees whose families had been killed by US bombing” who attacked him were justified because they thought he was American. Um is that not inciting violence against Americans?

Sounds like it to me, but I don’t pretend to be objective where Fisk is concerned. Or at least, my judgment of any statement he makes is colored by my knowledge of the others he’s made.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Quick responds to some comments Chapman made about his post. I should stress that I think Chapman’s a smart, decent guy. Which is what makes him worth responding to.