Nasty Little Man

Confounding cartoons

Here I take my departure from my fellow lefties: This cartoon business in the Middle East is absurd. Not exactly a Zen thing to say and my community psychology professors might get upset with me for saying it, but facts are facts. There are all kinds of noteworthy observations here.

1. This whole affair is more processed and manufactured than a McNugget. Andrew Sullivan reports today that the cartoons were published many months ago in Egypt.

No one rioted. No editor at Al Fager was threatened. So it's official: the Egyptian state media is less deferential to Islamists than the New York Times. So where were the riots in Cairo?

2. We have our own brand of zealots here in the USA. The fundies, aka the Christianists, are a dangerous bunch, but when NBC ran The Book of Daniel, the Christianists didn't burn down NBC's affiliates. They wrote letters.

3. The violence could not do a greater disservice to Islam. It furthers the worst stereotypes and adds fuel to the western fools who insist that Islam is a dangerous religion.

Our government and media should not be kowtowing to this nonsense.

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 12:56 PM