The Offensive Line

I want you to do some role playing for a minute.

Please observe the picture on the right. This was downloaded from a random photo gallery on some random website. I was looking for a Star of David to complete a design I had conjured up for Tshirt printing. In all honesty, I was struck a little hard by this image, although I understand and generally agree with it's sentiment.

So, imagine for a minute that you are one of the so-called "moral majority". Patriotic, probably Christian, maybe republican and definitely conservative. You support the troops, fear terrorism and agree with more or less everything Condoleeza Rice has to say about our affairs with the Arab world. If this is actually you, or a similar summary of your political alignment, then great. This will be the easiest role you ever played.

How does this image make you feel? Does it anger you? Scare you? Do you find it hateful, threatening to your ideals or outright aggressively offensive? Let it sink in for awhile, and we'll revisit...

The Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad have caused a worldwide stir that no controversial cartoon or comic strip has ever been able to nail – it has unleashed a backlash that has the Western world rallying in fear, the family jewels firmly in hand. The depictions of the prophet have sent the message to Muslims that the West doesn't take their cherished religion seriously. That we can, by their perception, think defacing their most holy visage is somehow not only appropriate, but funny. The violent responses staged by protesters in Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to name a few, have led to arson, fighting and threats of kidnappings and possible executions. Westerners of many nations have been driven out of embassies or forcefully encouraged to leave Muslim communities. Worst of all, many peaceful protests around the world, mainly organized by Muslim college students, have been attacked by trigger happy police forces and their usual smorgasboard of teargas and rubber bullets. In fact, some police forces in Pakistan were brazen enough to use real ammunition last week, killing four and wounding another eleven, when they fired haphazardly into a demonstration of a few hundred people.

I have yet to hear any apology for this insult from the Danish publishers of the cartoon, it's supporters, or anyone else who might have capitalized on the opportunity for Muslim hating it has opened up. Indeed, Condie Rice was quoted on CNN as saying that nations opposing the West, namely Iran, Syria and Lebanon, have been fanning the violent protests over the characitures. Apologies have been asked for regarding this comment apparently, but I'd be willing to bet none have been made. If there's one thing besides competent that the Bush administration isn't, it's apologetic. Whoever penned these cartoons should feel like The Fan when he caught that fly ball at Wrigley Field when the Cubs played the Marlins. Only on a much more catastrophic scale. Of course, they are more likely hiding behind the volleys of “free speech” that some are firing and the salvos of “protests incited by Islamic terrorists” that come from others. Really though, if you look at Al Qaieda's track record you'll notice that they're pretty quick to fess up for any activity they can take credit for. So far, the only organization who has openly stepped up to the plate for Team Islam is the government of Iran.

Let's get back to our role play a little, but this time playing two roles. In addition to the American or Western-in-general conservative, I want you to imagine yourself as the Islamic conservative as well. Believe me, most Muslims are more conservative than Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and George W. all combined.

This is a little trickier, isn't it? I have a hard enough time imagining myself as an American conservative, I can barely imagine what it would be like to be an Islamic one. But imagining yourself in this position, a religious middle-easterner, living in a time when your freedom rests in the hands of a bloodthirsty regime of foreign invaders or the same old bloodthirsty regime you've lived under your whole life, and some Danish yahoo comes along and slanders the one thing in this world that still makes sense to you. How would you feel? Would you want to stomp the Danish flag like they're doing in Palestine? Imagine the situation reversed, with the Islamic world depicting offensive subjects regarding America, Israel or any of the allied countries using these kinds of caricatures.

Now buckle up, because good 'ol president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is gonna serve up some serious equal justice!

Iranian president Ahmadinejad's latest pet project is to prove that the Nazi holocaust never happened and that it was a conspiracy of the Zionists. This is reason enough, according to him, to “wipe Israel off the map”. Currently Ahmadinejad is supporting a contest held by Iranian newspaper Hamshahri that will showcase international cartoonist's depictions of the holocaust. This is Mad Mahmoud's way of giving the West some perspective. The theory is that if freedom of speech extends to racist and religiously offensive drawings of Islamic prophets, we should have no problem with a little fun being poked at the plight of five million dead Jews. In all honesty, I can catch his drift to an extent. This is exactly the kind of provocation I would have concocted as a teenager, when I was out more to piss people off then to voice my concerns in hopes of a better world. Ahmedinejad, from my perspective, is a lot like an irreverent teenager. All fire, testosterone and reckless destruction without any premeditative thought or consideration for the basic importance of human life. In fact, him and our own president would perhaps be best off getting over their phobia of gay marriage and immersing themselves in matrimony. They have so much in common. It could be really, really beautiful.

So, once again we've only learned at best that two wrongs don't make a right. Unfortunately, in a world filled with middle-aged teenage politicians, we can only watch as they go to war over who was wrong first.

There are currently dozens of TV cartoons and comic strips that portray the average American in glorious satire today. Shows like “Family Guy”, “American Dad” and “The Simpsons” specialize in episodic triumph of the obese, the ignorant and the flat out bigoted. Our sense of biting satire allows us to decipher the underlying humor in these scenarios – what comes out of the mouths of guys like Peter Griffin or Stan Smith isn't really funny, but the fact that our culture puts up with them and indeed sometimes resembles them is. Further down the rabbit hole, you'll find the new show “Moral Orel”. If there was a Danish cartoon on Christians, this would be it. Orel is a squeaky clean, god-fearing child living in Moralton USA. His father is a hard drinking polygamist with a dead end job and his little brother has a strange mental deficiency that causes aggression and also looks nothing like either parent. In his many misadventures, Orel mistakes the meaning of his beloved church sermons, taking many of them too literally. His confusion causes him to believe his little brother is the reincarnation of Jesus, turn all the town's dead into zombies, get addicted to crack, drink his own urine and pull the plug on an old lady on life support. At the end of every episode, his dad whips his ass with a belt (the scene usually begins with Orel pulling up his pants) and sets him straight by quoting misguided commandments that all come after 10.

Ok, so this is America, we have free speech, it's just TV, yadda-yadda. But what if this was produced in Syria? What if Hamas is sitting on the other side of the world laughing their asses off at this? More importantly, how funny would this be if we were under the occupation of Islamic extremists right now?

In closing, I guess I have only one question for the Danish Cartoonist – what did you expect? I wish the Muslims could see and understand something like “Moral Orel” though. Maybe if they saw how critical many of us are of our own country, they would take us less seriously too. It may give them the image-boost they need to get their point across. Unlike most Americans, I don't want the Muslim way of life or the middle east itself to fade from the earth all together. I don't want it to lose it's voice and be silenced forever. Resident Bush is actually right when he says that their leaders need to step down and let the people have their freedom. The problem is that he doesn't really care, nor have any of our leaders in the past. They don't care how many innocents get tortured, murdered, raped or ransomed, as long as the keepers of the oil are in our back pocket. As soon as they go “renegade” it's suddenly all about freedom. All satire aside, freedom shouldn't be about who's laughing last.

D-LC,

Chicago