| You know, lots of religions have pretty strong rules about just how their top dogs can or will be expressed. For Jews and Christians for example, it’s the second of the Ten Commandments, ranking even higher than proscriptions against treating your parents badly, killing, lying and coveting. Remember also that nobody likes their stuff messed with, especially by outsiders or infidels.
Because you can always count on them to take the low road, the Iranian government sponsored a cartoon contest of their own, Holocaust-themed, by way of challenging the cherished, and occasionally convenient, Western notion of "freedom of speech." It should make for an interesting juxtaposition, seeing as free speech is not something to which Iranians are normally entitled.
"But what about the rioting?" you ask. "Surely the rioting must prove that they are unreasonable and immoderate…?" Dude, riots happen everywhere, and are always due to a complicated balance between jumping and being pushed. Check your sociology textbooks. Crowds of people get all wound up, something else sets ‘em off and suddenly, you’ve got a bunch of unreasonable immoderates, behaving accordingly. Remember Edmonton’s own, Overabundance of Liquor on Canada Day riot? Or before that, the Stanley Cup Parade riot of ’80-whatever?
You might want to make a distinction between secular and religious riots, but as for me, no way. I’m not about to get into what makes for a higher- or lower-quality riot, or what makes one riot more righteous than another. Here in the First World, we like to think our sensibilities are too eroded by the torrent of offensive images and expressions we’re subjected to everyday, to be sucked into anything more than a polite demonstration over the public misrepresentation of an esteemed leader. To that, I say we don’t give ourselves enough credit.
Blinded by faith
Who says we don’t have a segment of our population, who willfully choose to shut down their critical functions, opt for ignorance over reason, and offer themselves up for mass manipulation by anyone willing to pull the strings? And who says we don’t have our own brand of mullahs patrolling the spiritual landscape, all of them too-prepared to try their hands at puppetry? If you don’t agree, try writing a letter to the newspaper about the theory of evolution vs. "intelligent design" and see what happens.
And if we’ve already got those factors, how hard could it be to come up with an appropriately inflammatory image for the shepherds to wave at their flocks, winding them up, really getting the juices of righteous indignation flowing?
The most interesting thing about the Iranian contest is how it implicitly raises the question of what it might take to send mobs of other religious groups into the streets. Predictably, they chose to go after Jews.
No no, you’re absolutely right, we shouldn’t ever forget the Holocaust and all that, but aren’t there more contemporary examples laying around, ones that could provide ample opportunities for potential free-speakers to raise an identifiable group’s collective dander?
Imagine, for example, a drawing of Jesus Christ in battle fatigues, halo and U.S. flag prominently featured, posing Lyndie England-style with drooping cigarette, good-times smile and gun-totin’ fingers, next to a pyramid of Iraqi men, naked but for the panties they wear on their heads. Space permitting, there could be a vicious, barking dog. "Clash of Civilizations" it could say across the top or bottom of the panel, in the jaunty scrawl of the artist’s hand.
Draw it myself? Sorry buddy, I’m no Dane. Of course, it’s there for the pickin’, for anybody who wants to make a point, some irreverent soul, unconcerned with the lack of protection a cry of "Freedom of Speech" affords them from an angry mob… |
