Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Cartoon: The Revenge



Things to remember when plotting a cartoon revenge:

Know the religious makeup of the country you're pissed off at.
Denmark, for example, is "Evangelical Lutheran." Though they were quite kind to refugee Jews during WWII, and there are likely some Jews still living there, it is not a Jewish country.

Know the history of the event you're planning on "satirizing."
The Holocaust, for example, did target Jews, but basically the goal of the Nazis was to eliminate "impure" races and individuals, including so-called "mud people." Therefore, if you're not a pure-blooded Ayran from the Barvarian or Nordic areas of the world, you're pretty well screwed. Oh, and you had to be Protestant; they weren't very forgiving of other views of God. So if you happen to be from the non-white parts of the world (e.g., say, oh, Iran), they'd have been coming for you eventually. And 60 years ago, they'd probably have made many inroads.

Know the religious makeup and history of the individuals you're actually attempting to offend.
While it's possible and probably likely that some Jews will be offended by lowlifes who would try and illustrate something like the Holocaust in "funny" or "satirical" terms (how would one satirize the Holocaust, exactly? I mean, just for the sake of argument, it's not like those pretentious Jews who got themselves gassed did it accidentally or something), I bet we won't see

Embassy-burning
Flag-torching
Widescale violent protests
Deaths

over it. Nobody pokes fun at the Jews better than the Jews. It's how you cope in a world that blames you for freaking everything.

The one amusing element to all of this, and even then it's not all that amusing, just ironic: Danishes (the breakfast pastries) have been renamed in Iran. They're calling them "Mohammedan" pastries. Because while you can't depict the prophet graphically, you can eat him if he comes with sugar and fruit. Apparently.

I mean, how silhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifly is that, to rename a food item because you don't like the country it came from? We'd never do that in the US. We certainly wouldn't legislate it, or attempt to.

Oh, wait, we would.

Everybody, into the kiddie pool! It's time to all act like five year olds!


UPDATE: Choire Sicha has something to say, and says it well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A good piece from the London Times.

UPDATE, THE REVENGE: I never thought I'd say it, but you go, Christopher Hitchens.

1 comment:

Kristin said...

I am also all for renaming crude oil from Iraq "freedom fuel". No longer will we gas our vehicles up, but we will freedom fuel them up. It's coming, keep your eyes open.