Caricature Mayhem

Hypocrisy
Illustration by Alan Moir from SMH

1. I find it interesting that no Australian newspaper would publish the cartoons that sparked (pun intended) the inferno (and again) of hatred and violence in the middle east; it seems an altogether too sensible a decision for certain, less ethical papers to have made. I congratulate them on their good taste, because not only did those cartoons provoke muslims all over the world — they just weren’t very funny. If anything, they show the immaturity and lack of depth of the artists, and the publisher, rather than provide any sort of useful critique of the muslim world. Luckily, the muslim world made up for their lost ground by staging possibly the most ridiculous knee-jerk overreaction since, well, ever.

2. Seriously, firebombing embassies, that’s a fine example of mature behaviour. Sure, it’s the fundamentalists who have hijacked Islam and used it as an excuse to kill people, and yes, the fundamentalists are only a small percentage of all muslims; but you’ve got to wonder who it is that’s out there setting fire to buildings. If they’re all fundamentalists, then there’s an awful lot of them, but if they’re not, then there’s an awful lot of people who are willing to resort to violence and destruction just because someone mocked their beliefs. Mum taught me what the word for that is: it’s called a tantrum.

3. The people responsible for the cartoons might not be very funny, but the reaction from the muslim world only proves that however ham-fisted their attempt to paint all muslims as intolerant and violent, they pretty much got it right. And that’s gotta hurt.

Comments

  1. BTW, The Courier Mail in Bris Vegas did show it I think. I’m pretty sure one Australian (News Limited) paper in QLD did print it in the end. Anyway, Queensland is so full of rednecks that hardly anyone is going to make a fuss of it. Come on! They gave a quarter of their vote to One Nation not that long ago! We can’t seriously expect much from them…nor can we really consider them a serious threat to anything…other than themselves perhaps :P

    Comment by abend — March 1, 2006 @ 2:27 pm

  2. Really? I know Tim Blair (who works at one of the News Corp papers) published it on his blog, but I didn’t realise one of the papers did too. Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised the Courier Mail published it!

    Comment by JohnK — March 1, 2006 @ 5:15 pm

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