> Jackasses making veiled threats and TV networks obliging the jackasses by censorship. Yeah, well: it's all fun and games until someone gets knifed on the str

> Jackasses making veiled threats and TV networks obliging the jackasses by censorship. Yeah, well: it's all fun and games until someone gets knifed on the street, as happened to Theo Van Gogh. I'm sure the guy who did that was a jackass, too. My point is that we shouldn't equivocate or relativize on the jackassery of the various parties. What the TV networks did was lamentable but, in light of recent events, comprehensible. What 'jackasses' making veiled threats and those that carry them out do is utterly reprehensible and doesn't merit the lightness of the word you chose. The two types of jackasses you mention are totally different. Ass-covering is surely not so big a sin as killing or threatening to.