Oh for the love of crap. Look. My own opinion on the Cartoon Controversy is very simple.
I don't care. Yes, yes, I know, the fate of the planet depends on it. I still don't care.
Why? Because like everything else conservative reactionary dipshits give a crap about, it is a manufactured issue. It is manufactured by far right religious/race extremists and xenophobes in the Middle East, intentionally treating every offense as worthy of self-inflicted apocalypse in order to maintain their status as powerbrokers. It is manufactured by far-right religious/race extremists and xenophobes here precisely it is a way to inflame world tensions, "prove" racial superiorities, help manufacture a wider base for their own racist and xenophobic ramblings, and justify more radical action in the coming years.
We're all supposed to believe that right-wing racist nutjobs like Michelle Malkin, who I will point out for the three thousand eighty seventh time
wrote a goddamn book defending the internment of American men, women and children into detention camps based on their ethnicity, honestly gives a crap about free speech, or about censorship, or indeed about
anything involving race relations that doesn't involved barbed wire or poorly done tattoos. Yeah. I don't buy it.
We're supposed to believe that the exact same right-wing crowd that gets the goddamn spastic vapors when a boobie is shown on TV or when Jesus is shown on a television series in a way that does not flatter their particular single religion is now suddenly concerned about the corrosive destructiveness of censorship on American society. Yeah -- I really don't buy it.
We're supposed to believe that the throbbing masses that hurrah for David Horowitz, a man so Goddamn Dedicated to the notion of free speech that he's been on a crusade to get students to report professors who dare express non-conservative opinions outside the classroom, or inside the classroom, or who might give class assignments that cause undue boo-boos to the easily bruised minds of Ann Coulter acolytes, suddenly are champions of free and protected speech.
We're supposed to believe that a collection of internet sites self-dedicated to attacking Muslims now aren't doing that at all, and are in this for the sunny, flag-waving nobility of it all. That they're in absolutely throbbing, erectile outrage at the thuggishness of threatening people over what they say or write or do -- so they're going to work to punish anyone who doesn't agree with their own pointy-headed point of view.
Here's William Donohue, a man who has dedicated a large portion of his public attention to warning us about the danger of gay-supporting anal-sex-loving Christian-hating atheistic Jews in control of Hollywood:
A frequent "South Park" critic, William Donohue of the anti-defamation group Catholic League, called on Parker and Stone to resign out of principle for being censored.
"The ultimate hypocrite is not Comedy Central _ that's their decision not to show the image of Muhammad or not _ it's Parker and Stone," he said. "Like little whores, they'll sit there and grab the bucks. They'll sit there and they'll whine and they'll take their shot at Jesus. That's their stock in trade."
William Donohue is such a particular brand of right-wing dip -- I swear, we need to break out the currently taboo word, "retarded", and use it especially and exclusively for the cult of self-imposed dementia currently surrounding us -- that he sees absolutely no irony in bravely calling for South Park to take itself off the air "out of principle" in an episode entirely dedicated to the premise of people pretending to give a crap about a television program in order to get it off the air.
This man, I say to you, is a Hollow-Point Idiot. He could not get stupider if he tried. He is a head injury attached to a man -- a man who can wrap faux-outrage over an act of censorship within a call for censorship. A man who can meet himself coming and going, and at the same time never quite leave the vicinity of his own bowels.
These people -- all of them -- are hardly friends of free speech. They don't give a crap about free speech, and they spend large portions of their lives shredding their clothes and tearing their hair at the free speech and free beliefs of others. They are simply vibrating with self-important happiness because, at yet another moment of history, the causes of right-wing radicalism and self-indulgent bigotry can momentarily be wrapped in a flag.
There is no question that we have the "right" to show images of Muhammad. There is no question that it falls firmly within the bounds of free speech; there is not even the slightest hint from the government that censorship will be at any point imposed. But there is a very simple -- almost transparently simple -- issue here.
Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you should do it. Maybe where you have a right to offend a hundred people, or ten thousand, maybe doing so just makes you a jackass -- not a patriot.
And it really is just as simple as that. It really, really is.
We hear, from these paragons of far-right principle desperately swimming against the tide -- telling us the Iraq War is oh-so-very-much about the War on Terror, telling us that we shouldn't be silly, nobody ever said anything about weapons of mass destruction, that was all in your head, you terrible Bush-haters, and telling us that goddamn it this is still all going to work out fine because President Bush is an idiot savant, and when the cameras are off he's an absolute genius, a legend in their own minds and his -- we hear all about how we went into Iraq to save the people.
This concern, of course, lasts approximately as long as a common fuse. We may be saving Iraq, and probably next Iran, and what the hell, the entire Middle East, but there's nothing wrong with a few 2000 lb bombs dropped in civilian neighborhoods. There's nothing wrong with the notion that if they aren't behaving, it means we haven't yet shown the resolve necessary to kill more of them.
Because what we really need to do, the armchair patriots say, is teach these Brown People a lesson. A lesson about tolerance for others, you intolerant r--heads.
We hear a lot about teaching the Brown People a lesson. That seems to be the supposed central theme, here -- a sad but necessary White Man's Burden to piss off the supposed Savages, in order to teach them another fine and pasty-white lesson about AMERICA FUCK YEAH or something. That's not noble. It's fucking moronic -- foreign policy butt-waving, nothing more.
Seems to me that when Our Fighting Men And Women are in a foreign land, trying to keep the peace, keep themselves safe, quell factional hatreds and assure all parties that this is not a conflict against their religion, having a socioreligious dick-waving festival isn't "brave" in the slightest. Think it's helping? Think the Very Important Right to draw Muhammad -- a taboo ninety percent of America didn't even know existed, six months ago -- is at this very instant more important than helping our soldiers keep the peace and get home safe from a country that doesn't trust, in the slightest bit, that we're there out of the best of intentions, and that this is in fact not a religious fight between civilizations?
Yeah, of course it is. That's why you've got your ass in a chair back here, while actual soldiers are fighting there. Because, as so many figures among the right have snuffled, they're doing their part in the war effort.
Mmm-hmm. Whatever. Pin a Mallomar to your chest, freedom-lover, and accept your accolades.
Welcome, incidentally, to the Republican campaign season. We're going to be talking about the incompetence -- the incredible clusterfuck -- of conservative-backed war plans in Iraq. They're going to be talking about flag burning. We're going to be asking how the hell an entire party -- Republican president, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican strategists -- could have designed tax and budget policies that have created tidal waves of debt for the foreseeable future. They're going to be telling you that all your problems are because of brown immigrants, the "ungrateful human parasites". We're going to be talking about investigations that threaten to land a half-dozen or more Republican congressmen in jail. They're going to be talking about how Jesus hates your ever loving guts, and whether or not women should be allowed to cross state lines to get abortions in the coming Gilead.
All of these are far-right manufactured themes revolving around the big theme, a Republican attempt to reframe the Southern Strategy of bigotries into, once again, a willing coalition of the foulest, and this is just the latest incarnation of the common thread -- a rallying cry among the people who really, really want to drag the Cartoon Controversy out into a multination pissing match between their extremists and our right-wing extremists, because pissing matches are the closest thing to a "foreign policy" most of these folks will ever have.
All of it is manufactured.
If there was not a rule followed by many Muslims -- many Muslims, not all -- that images of Muhammad are contrary to the faith, nobody involved would give a rat's ass. And you have the right to be as crude, as foul, as blasphemous, as odorous, as repulsive as you like. But you don't get to call it bravery, or patriotic, and you certainly don't get to whine of the injustice of it all when others don't follow your path.
When all that your country might ask of you, at this point in time, to help the war effort, is to not inflame tensions, and not portray the war effort as the clash of religions, and not choose the backdrop of a growing anti-American backlash in Iraq to now decide that the beliefs of Muslims need to be intentionally shit upon in as many venues as possible, just to teach them that we have the freedom to do it -- yeah, that's bravery, all right. Sure thing.
Now, should there be government censorship? Of course not. This was an unfathomable (let's suppose) opinion to have when Piss Christ hit the national scene, and it was the orchestral strings and winds of Christianity muttering about blasphemies, bigotries and responsibilities. It was similarly ridiculous when a painting referencing the Virgin Mary but painted in part with elephant dung caused retribution to the gallery daring to display it. It isn't happening now. It's only a matter of choices. I choose not to "republish!" the cartoons out of respect for a culture, and the seeming irrelevancy of making religious strife worse for the sake of making it worse. Nothing more. Except for the true bogs and backwaters of society, most of the civilized planet seems to be agreeing with that general sense.
There seems little doubt that, among certain Muslims, the rule against images of the prophet is met with selective and coaxed outrage, and the current Controversy is every bit as manufactured an event there as it is here. It is their far-right, ultraconservative xenophobic extremists against ours, and neither side has the slightest intention of letting the other side infest them with cooties, or whatever the hell the point of this pitched and ridiculous mini-battle has been. Nevertheless, we can choose to simply not play the chosen game.
It is a fire being flamed solely by the most ultraconservative and xenophobic on each side and I, for one, think both sides are made up entirely of idiots. I think if you combing through the actions of people a half-world away to see if maybe, just maybe, you should be offended by it, you have no business representing your religion, or any religion. I think if you have made it a central point of your existence to prove that you have the right and duty to be as much of a goddamn, steel-toed, horsefucking prick as you want to be, towards other religions, you don't get to bat your eyes and point at how backwards they are when they take offense.
Go to any of the sites most dedicated to "uncensoring" cartoons showing Muhammad burning in hell, Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban. Notice anything? Congratulations, you've figured it out. Go down the list of sites most interested in the controversy, and you will see site after site dedicated to reporting news of the Arab menace. On some of the "cleaned up" hate sites that pass for the far-right's braintrust, all of the posts for a day, or any given series of days, are dedicated to any news which can even remotely be sandwiched into "proving" Muslim extremism. When a bombing happens, they're all over it. When nothing happens, then the pressure to improvise is palpable -- a Muslim man shoots his sister in Europe, then what the hell, maybe it's proof of Muslim terror cells.
And from now on, I think we can safely describe every fake issue in America as a Cartoon Controversy. Immigration? A Cartoon Controversy. Flag burning? A Cartoon Controversy. Not being able to convince everyone around you to shit on the sensibilities of another culture just to prove you can do it?
A Cartoon Controversy.