One-Upmanship

Okay, I've been following the "Danish Cartoon" story, but I haven't really been talking about it. My opinion was pretty much covered by August when he said:

Are the cartoons freedom of speech? Well, yeah. Of course you have the right to print shitty, racist cartoons that serve no purpose but to inflame Arab sentiment and make racist right-wingers feel good about themselves. You have the right to show a black man hanging from a tree or a buck-toothed Asian, too. But in any of those cases you don't have the right to feign petty self-righteous faux-amazement that people got upset about it. Instead of saying "these are controversial but we uphold a standard of free speech, regardless of ones personal tastes," they claimed that people getting outraged were simply being ridiculous. Le Monde made this their cover today- they might as well have printed "dammit, we LOVE mocking Arabs and fuck you if you don't!" as the headline.

This isn't South Park, where there's actually some concept of social mores being challenged or questioned. Agree or disagree with various South Park episodes (like I do), there's an intelligent justification for most of the racial humor in that show. There isn't any here. The cartoons were drawn for one single purpose: to attack Muslims and provoke their ire.

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So then I read this headline today, and my blood just ran cold.

Iranian Paper Plans Holocaust Cartoons

TEHRAN, Iran - A prominent Iranian newspaper said Tuesday it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Hamshahri, one of Iran's largest papers, made clear the contest is a reaction to European newspapers' publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which have led to demonstrations, boycotts and attacks on European embassies across the Islamic world. Several people have been killed.

-snip-

The newspaper said the contest would be launched Monday and co-sponsored by the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons. The paper and the cartoon center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, well-known for his opposition to Israel.

Ahmadinejad, who was Tehran's mayor until being elected president in June, provoked outcries last year when he said on separate occasions that Israel should be "wiped off the map" and the Holocaust was a "myth."

-snip-

"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?" Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.

They're just flicking matches at powder kegs.

You know, if everyone on the goddamn planet is finally wiped out over a racist cartoon bitchslap fight, I'm going to be pretty pissed off.

(This isn't funny cross-post.)