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| Cultural Sensitivity Or Exhale Briskly? |
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| I'm going with the latter |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, February 27, 2008. APOLOGIES FOR ERROR INCLUDED. Just sayin'................. I sometimes wonder – today for example – if Allah hates Muslims as much as, we’re told, he hates infidels. After all, he doesn’t seem to have helped them of late. Yesterday in Khartoum, Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir said that he would bar Danes from Sudan and informed the crowd at a government-backed rally the Muslim world should boycott Denmark. This, because that nation again reprinted an editorial cartoon of the prophet Mohammed, who is not Allah nor a deity. Just a guy, like Moses and Jesus. Well, admittedly there is argument about what exactly Jesus was or is, some solemnly claiming he’s a tripartite treaty between godhead, spawn, and supernatural, but he was human at some point. "We urge all Muslims around the world to boycott Danish commodities, goods, companies, institutions, organizations and personalities," al-Bashir told the crowd, which responded "Down, down, Denmark!" apparently in convenient English for the media. Encouraged, Al-Bashir vowed that "not a single Danish foot will from now on desecrate the land of Sudan." Setting aside how it is now possible to desecrate that gigantic cat box of thugs, poverty, and genocide, there is the issue that Sudan received $26 million in Danish aid in 2006 and a $100 million humanitarian and reconstruction package is planned through 2009. Denmark is a small country, and that represents a lot of its aid. For those formulating hypocritical fiscal motives, Danish exports to Sudan are mostly dairy products, which arguably might go to starving children after the Army siphons its needs. In 2006, the trade was $23 million, a drop of 26 percent over the previous year. Still, the Danish Red Cross has been a consistent and constructive presence in Sudan. All this came about because two years ago, those cartoons were published in Denmark, and Europe’s Muslims went ballistic, insisting that the civilized world has to obey their idiotic strictures everywhere and for all time. Unbelievably, the world, although rationally concerned about bombs and violence - which is to say, cowed by the threat of violence – obeyed. Apologies and pleas for cultural sensitivity towards those who perform forced clitorectomies and sanction murder against novelists were widespread. Only lately has the continent of the Enlightenment and our cultural mother awoken to the fact it’s been blackmailed, and they’re not happy about it. Good. Here in Boulder the Damned, the little read weekly publication** of the CU journalism school, the Silver and Gold Record, published two opinion pieces by two separate writers making fun of, in ham fisted manner, social norms at the campus. I’ve read neither in toto, but apparently Hispanics and especially those of Asian descent were the respective targets. The most despicable thing mentioned was the threat of holding down Asian students and tickling them till they loosened up. Something. I’ve been the editor of a college paper, and I feel I’ve read if not written some of the worst and predictably failed satires of our time. The specifics aren’t important, absent physical threats or encouragement to lynch or abject racial stereotyping done in seriousness, not irony. But CU and the Boulder Sensitivity Squad unleashed the same sort of appeals as Al-Bashir to social cowardice and – far more importantly – to douse laughter. From what I’ve seen, these writings weren’t indicative of Voltaire at his best, but the intent is clear and these are kids in J-school learning about how to deal with the public. It isn’t a big deal, and the declared hurt feelings aren’t really believable and, be it said, are something that could be addressed by a Letter to the Editor. And it’s entirely annoying that the Muslim world daily encourages blood letting against its supposed enemies and heretics and nobody objects. If, say, the Japanese condoned satirical or gently humorous bits about their Imperial era previous to Hiroshima, I could feel their pain about being tickled a tad more. You know, about their mass murders and genocides and institutionalized slavery of foreign women. Oh, and ask China or Korea if you think that’s racial prejudice. It doesn’t happen there, and would probably get the participants killed, and that wouldn’t be investigated. So while folksy theocratic presidential candidate and idiot Mike Huckabee signs on to a Colorado initiative that a fertilized human egg is a person and has a soul previous to the Genesis specific breath of life, and our University roils in agony about a racial group being threatened with tickling, Israel is threatened with destruction and non Arab Africans are being deliberately exterminated by those for whom we’re to have sensitivity, especially about making fun of their prophet, not their god. This is all fueled by intellectual hypocrisy, deep stupidity, grotesque envy and mere desire for vengeance. And it should all be laughed at for the pretensions at the very least, and mocked for desecrating actual knowledge when we’ve never needed it more. And anyone who doesn’t like it can kneel down, embed their face against my standing frame and exhale briskly. ** Stupid and lazy error on my part. It was the online Campus Press, which yesterday I knew and yet screwed it up when I was in auto pilot this morning. Apologies to the J-school and Silver and Gold for that - bluntly - inexcusable error. I'm blaming it on recording the commentary between leaf blowing bouts outside the apartment window. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But BAD mistake, sincere apologies.......for that alone. |
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