Cartoons

All across the world, Muslims are showing up by the thousands to protest Danish cartoons. The funny thing is that they aren’t really spending that much of their effort protesting the cartoons themselves. The protests don’t seem to be targeting the author of the cartoons or the newspapers that published them all that much, either. Instead, they’re protesting America and Europe in general. So some Danish cartoonist drew a few caricatures of Muhammad in various unflattering situations and they got published in a newspaper. Big deal, get over it. I’ve seen the cartoons, it’s rather hard to avoid them if you have internet access and e-mail after all. There’s not much too them and they’re not really all that funny, although I suppose they beat reruns of Garfield. This appears to be nothing more than an excuse for the mindless masses to gather together, wave their hands in the air, and scream about things that they don’t really even know much about. Naturally, of course, one of the most common forms protest in these rallies is to chant “Death to America” or for those more polite, “Down with America”. This is perfectly logical, since the great evil beast that is America must surely control all of the published content in Danish newspapers.

These cartoons were first published in September of last year. That’s five months ago. There’s nothing like staying up with current world events, eh? It really makes you wonder if any of the protesters have even seen the cartoons. Of course actual knowledge of the object of a protest is generally not a prerequisite to demonstrate. Even if they haven’t actually seen the offensive pictures, well the masses have been told that they exist and that they should be offended by them.

In reality, these protests are just another way to grab media attention. The people leading these protests love the existence of the cartoons, because it gives them an excuse to rile up the masses. They just feed the mindless a few tidbits, tell them that they’ve been insulted, and send them out in the streets to complain. The mindless are certainly anxious to comply. After all they’ve been taught since a very young age that Western civilization is out to get them and America controls everything in the world. The protesters themselves are ignorant of what’s actually going on. They’re just doing what they’ve been conditioned to do. Protesting in the streets and shouting out against America is a kind of Pavlovian response to any political or economic event. They don’t really know what the issues are and it doesn’t really matter, its just time to protest.

It’s time to stop worrying about offending these morons. It’s time to stop publicizing their ridiculous anti-American protests. If they want to protest that’s fine with me, I really don’t care. If they want to shout and howl and wave their hands around, more power to them; just quit telling me about it. If you want to tell me about the protests, at least make sure the protesters are adequately informed. Distribute copies of the cartoons to all the protesters first, and then make sure that they all know who the cartoonist is and where he’s from. Otherwise, you’re just wasting my time.

Date Added: 27-02-2006