Monday, February 13, 2006
Blogger mangled the first version of this post. Let's try this again...
This is going to be my only post on this topic, but - Does anyone else think of Donald Duck and Petunia Pig angrily brandishing molotov cocktails when they hear reference to the "cartoon riots"? Not that I suppose it matters to either side at this point, but the drawings that everyone's upset about aren't the by-comparison-innocuous ones that were published by the Danish newspaper. The Globe and Mail has that story, which seems to have flown under everyone else's radar, here.
One wonders what the reaction would be if something similar happened in the U.S. - say, an American political group sent American politicians cartoons of Jesus sodomizing a child, and some hoo-head spread the rumor that The Washington Post had published it. Most pundits say that the American response would be more enlightened. I disagree. Less violent, certainly. But more enlightened? Remember the boycott of Proctor & Gamble, because the moon on their label "proved" they were owned by the Church of Satan? Here's what I predict would happen:
1. A boycott of the newspaper by people who don't read it anyway.
2. A boycott of all stores that sell the newspaper.
3. A boycott of all companies that advertise in the newspaper.
4. A boycott of Starbucks, just because.
5. A nationwide crusade to raise funds for some unspecified activity to fight cartoons, simulcast to mega-churches throughout the country.
6. Cartoon-scandal themed 401 scam spam.
7. Viruses spread via emails with cartoon-scandal subject lines.
8. Anti-cartoon legislation springing up in backwater counties to be immediately followed by a challenge to their constitutaionality from the ACLU.
9. Calls from members of Congress to amend the Constitution to make cartoons illegal.
10. Pundits carrying on authoritatively about cartoons, when in fact the last cartoon they'd read was Lil Dot back in 1965.
The vast and noisy circus would suddenly be cut short and be forgotten within the week when an unchaperoned American teenager disappeared on spring break in a foreign country.
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This is going to be my only post on this topic, but - Does anyone else think of Donald Duck and Petunia Pig angrily brandishing molotov cocktails when they hear reference to the "cartoon riots"? Not that I suppose it matters to either side at this point, but the drawings that everyone's upset about aren't the by-comparison-innocuous ones that were published by the Danish newspaper. The Globe and Mail has that story, which seems to have flown under everyone else's radar, here.
One wonders what the reaction would be if something similar happened in the U.S. - say, an American political group sent American politicians cartoons of Jesus sodomizing a child, and some hoo-head spread the rumor that The Washington Post had published it. Most pundits say that the American response would be more enlightened. I disagree. Less violent, certainly. But more enlightened? Remember the boycott of Proctor & Gamble, because the moon on their label "proved" they were owned by the Church of Satan? Here's what I predict would happen:
1. A boycott of the newspaper by people who don't read it anyway.
2. A boycott of all stores that sell the newspaper.
3. A boycott of all companies that advertise in the newspaper.
4. A boycott of Starbucks, just because.
5. A nationwide crusade to raise funds for some unspecified activity to fight cartoons, simulcast to mega-churches throughout the country.
6. Cartoon-scandal themed 401 scam spam.
7. Viruses spread via emails with cartoon-scandal subject lines.
8. Anti-cartoon legislation springing up in backwater counties to be immediately followed by a challenge to their constitutaionality from the ACLU.
9. Calls from members of Congress to amend the Constitution to make cartoons illegal.
10. Pundits carrying on authoritatively about cartoons, when in fact the last cartoon they'd read was Lil Dot back in 1965.
The vast and noisy circus would suddenly be cut short and be forgotten within the week when an unchaperoned American teenager disappeared on spring break in a foreign country.
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