A dilemma

This year kicked off as a comic's dream with the headline, "BIRD FLU STRIKES TURKEY!" I'm sure the Turks whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed by the disease didn't even crack a smile, but let's face it, that line is funny.
Comedy is often at someone's expense.

But is it funny when a Danish paper slaps a sizeable chunk of the world's most hair-trigger inhabitants in the face with a half defrosted pork chop?

They've published a series of cartoons lampooning Islam and reaction has grown with subsequent reprinting elsewhere. So far I've only seen one in the local Mail and Guardian. Don't know why this brave publication didn't print them all if they were going to print any. Maybe they think militants give you one free blasphemy, sort of like being a little bit pregnant or somewhat beheaded. But I don't think it quite works that way.

Thus, Denmark goes straight to the top of the great-Satan hit parade/list. The Danes?! When last did the Danes do something controversial? Personally, I think any nation that inflicts the hell of Lego on children has a serious tendency towards cruelty, so they definitely need close watching.

But these berserker newspapers haven't printed anything that hasn't been written/said a thousand times before, so why the fuss now? Can it really be true that a picture is worth a thousand words or at least the price of the petrol in a Molotov cocktail? And how is it that these pictures are suddenly the last straw that broke... (OOPS! Caught myself nearly indulging in an offensive cultural stereotype there!) What I meant to ask is, what in our secular, bacon munching, booze guzzling, Britney Spears' boobs ogling lifestyles DOESN'T affront Islam? Where are you personally going to draw the line to ensure your neighbour is happy and not lining you up in the cross-hairs of his Mercedes?

Because, in the streets, they can smell your fear.

As I said, when I was a fresh, idealistic stand-up, I once offended an audience member. He grabbed me later, outside the club and showed me his police I.D., assuring me that he could have me thrown in a cell for the night where I would be roundly and soundly sodomised. He said he knew I'd be buggered, because he'd bribe my cellmates with an arm of dagga to do so. (Sigh! Was I so ugly that caged animals had to be paid to molest me?)

I apologised. More accurately, I cringed like I'd been caught buying a Celine Dion album. Not because I meant it or thought he deserved it, but because I was as terrified as I'd ever been in my life. He won, because a death threat is a pretty effective heckle.

So what's the connection? Well, I guess my point is that it's all funny until it's your arse on the line. If I wanted to start a fight, I wouldn't have chosen to pick one with Muslim people using these cartoons; they obviously are insulting to the religious. But do the religious get to decide the consequences for the rest of us? No. because, if the people screaming for the massacre of cartoonists are right, then George W. and his anti-evolutionists are right. Then Pope Whatsisname, the HIV, and his condom banning buddies are right. Then threats and force and violence are right. Then a very real war between cultures really is inevitable.

Both sides are being obnoxious. Both should take some sincere steps ( peace making deeds not words) to make amends. But let's not pretend that drawing ink warrants drawing blood, because it doesn't.