Cartoon Offensive

Cartoon Network

Prepare to Be Offended
Pierre Tristam / Candide’s Notebooks, September 20, 2007

The good old days: when M*A*S*H's Last Supper was the jewel in the crown of blasphemy

Cartoon scandals have become the refrain of that mostly imaginary clash of civilizations both sides’ fanatics like to promote as make-work for their ideologues, their under-employed suicide-murderers and oversexed neocons. It wouldn’t be so bad if cartoon wars were just that—wars over words and drawings, using words and, if you like, boycotts in return. But governments are meddling, people are getting jailed, or killed, or encouraged to kill. So: should we silence the offending cartoonists and be done with it? Might as well ask if we should do the same to the billion-odd people supposedly taking offense at the drawings. Martin Amis once said that “being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.” He meant western culture. Turns out it’s the one addiction, other than freebasing fundamentalism, that East and West share most in this miserably unenlightened new century.

-cont.

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Candide’s Notebooks: The Daily Journal

A Bushy Circle Jerk

Filed under: Uncategorized — Pierre Tristam @ Candide's Notebooks

Hugh Hewitt, apparently one of the nation’s shout-show radio hosts, was boasting about his recent chat with Mr. Bush at the White House on August 1. He was there with nine other neo-concubines: Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Neal Boortz, Scott Hennon, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Mark Levin, Michael Medved and Janet Parshall. “This was an off-the-record conversation,” Hewitt ponderously says, “and so I won’t be quoting the president.” Then he gives us the latest insight into reactionaries’ lingering delusions (Hewitt and his klan still do have an audience to pander to): “I will say on today’s show that I am confident about the course of the war and about the momentum in Iraq, as well of the president’s absolute commitment to doing right by the troops and his concern for every lost and wounded soldier and their families. President Bush’s command of the details and his broad view of the conflict is reassuring. […]” What I liked most was one of the comments left to Hewitt, by someone identified only as Goose99 (he may go by the name Geraint Rees, from England):

I think a better approach for the conservative commentators who believe that we are making good progress in Iraq than going to a closed door, off the record session with the President to hear his views on how well things are going in Iraq, would be for them to organize a field trip to Baghdad for themselves and like-minded conservative supporters of the war effort. They could charter a bus from the airport, tour Baghdad, make a few side excursions into the countryside to Hillah, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Al Kut, meet ordinary Iraqis, stay in hotels outside the Green Zone to enjoy how Iraqis experience the provision of essential services like electricity and public safety, then return home to discuss their first hand experiences. To identify themselves as patriotic Americans, they would sew American flags on their sleeves and wear their patriotic American flag pins in their lapels. Their charter bus should be festooned with American flags and banners identifying themselves as American journalists who have supported the efforts of President Bush so that ordinary Iraqis would be able to recognize them and could approach them to show appreciation for their unstinting support for the war effort.

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