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Two Wrongs Will Put Everything Right…Right?
Posted by Somebody's Mother
on
1:01 p.m.
Newsflash: An Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, has received over 700 entries for its contest to find the best Holocaust-related cartoon. One entry supports Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s view that the Holocaust was a myth. It depicts a circle of nine Jewish men entering and leaving a gas chamber that shows a counter reading "5,999,999," implying that Jews have inflated the number of Holocaust victims. Another cartoon shows Jews lining up and entering a gas pipeline.
Yes, there’s certainly nothing like laughing to bring people together and what better way to unite the world than running a contest like this every year. Maybe next year, Hamshahri can run a contest calling for cartoons on the killing fields of Cambodia. The year after that, there’s always Rwanda and with any luck, Darfur will be good for a few more laughs.
History is a gold mine of slaughter and human misery. Just ask the aboriginal people of North and South America. Their massacre over hundreds of years should supply the entire world with lots of laughs and lots of fodder for hysterically funny cartoons. Monty Python had an enormous amount of fun with the Spanish Inquisition (“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”) Nazis were absolutely adorable on Hogan’s Heroes. Blood, guts and gore are a lot of fun.
Yes, folks, you are probably wondering if I’ve lost my mind. Join the club. I am most definitely wondering if I have lost my mind when I see this headline: Iranian Paper Holds Holocaust Contest. I surely must be hallucinating…yet sadly, I am not.
Many people agree that the cartoons that made fun of Islam that were published in a Danish newspaper were objectionable and ill-timed. To make fun of someone’s deeply held religious beliefs shows a high degree of xenophobia and an even higher degree of poor judgement. In plain English, it was stupid, really stupid. I saw them, thought they were poorly drawn and they reminded me of those horrible World War II cartoons that made caricatures of the Japanese people, showing them to be insects.
In order to have an enemies, you must make them less than human. People have been calling each other dogs, pigs, rats, etc. for years. Frankly, these members of the animal kingdom command greater respect than some of the human butchers who have pranced across history, slaughtering millions, only to die in humiliation. The recent demise of Slobodan Milosevic comes to mind. The Butcher of the Balkans killed and maimed throughout the Nineties, only to die in a jail cell and perhaps by his own hand.
I think that these cartoons - whether they make fun of Jews, Muslims, Africans, North Americans or whoever - are tools to propagate hatred so that those who thirst for power may pursue whatever path is necessary that will enlarge the scope of their power. The people of this world are just putty in their hands.
Isn’t there anyone who will stand up and say that he or she has had enough of the hatred that is being disseminated around the world? Perhaps, loving our neighbour is just a stupid pipe dream.
As in the novel 1984, we are constantly proving that two plus two does make five. Two wrongs do make a right and the more wrongs, the merrier. It may be entirely possible that we will blow everyone up in the process of proving this but prove it we will.
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Yes, there’s certainly nothing like laughing to bring people together and what better way to unite the world than running a contest like this every year. Maybe next year, Hamshahri can run a contest calling for cartoons on the killing fields of Cambodia. The year after that, there’s always Rwanda and with any luck, Darfur will be good for a few more laughs.
History is a gold mine of slaughter and human misery. Just ask the aboriginal people of North and South America. Their massacre over hundreds of years should supply the entire world with lots of laughs and lots of fodder for hysterically funny cartoons. Monty Python had an enormous amount of fun with the Spanish Inquisition (“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”) Nazis were absolutely adorable on Hogan’s Heroes. Blood, guts and gore are a lot of fun.
Yes, folks, you are probably wondering if I’ve lost my mind. Join the club. I am most definitely wondering if I have lost my mind when I see this headline: Iranian Paper Holds Holocaust Contest. I surely must be hallucinating…yet sadly, I am not.
Many people agree that the cartoons that made fun of Islam that were published in a Danish newspaper were objectionable and ill-timed. To make fun of someone’s deeply held religious beliefs shows a high degree of xenophobia and an even higher degree of poor judgement. In plain English, it was stupid, really stupid. I saw them, thought they were poorly drawn and they reminded me of those horrible World War II cartoons that made caricatures of the Japanese people, showing them to be insects.
In order to have an enemies, you must make them less than human. People have been calling each other dogs, pigs, rats, etc. for years. Frankly, these members of the animal kingdom command greater respect than some of the human butchers who have pranced across history, slaughtering millions, only to die in humiliation. The recent demise of Slobodan Milosevic comes to mind. The Butcher of the Balkans killed and maimed throughout the Nineties, only to die in a jail cell and perhaps by his own hand.
I think that these cartoons - whether they make fun of Jews, Muslims, Africans, North Americans or whoever - are tools to propagate hatred so that those who thirst for power may pursue whatever path is necessary that will enlarge the scope of their power. The people of this world are just putty in their hands.
Isn’t there anyone who will stand up and say that he or she has had enough of the hatred that is being disseminated around the world? Perhaps, loving our neighbour is just a stupid pipe dream.
As in the novel 1984, we are constantly proving that two plus two does make five. Two wrongs do make a right and the more wrongs, the merrier. It may be entirely possible that we will blow everyone up in the process of proving this but prove it we will.
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