Kvetch-a-Sketch

Once more into the breach.

Even when I write about something only mildly controversial I tend to get that feeling. I think it stems from growing up in a world-class dysfunctional family, in which my official name was “Your Idiot Son,” as in “what did Your Idiot Son just say?” or “When is Your Idiot Son going to shut up and take out the garbage?”

My trepidation is doubled when I realize that the controversial subject may itself be about dysfunctionality, so all my thoughts on the subject will probably serve to stimulate recollections of being backhanded for expressing thoughts.

That’s what came to mind when I heard of this whole Muhammed-cartoon controversy. First: the world is one giant dysfunctional family. Second: Ouch, I’m the poster-child. Third: Shouldn’t I be ducking right now?

In case you’ve been in a padded cell for the last couple of weeks, lucky you, the news is that back in September a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published a bunch of cartoons, most of which depicted the prophet Muhammed. This was done because the paper’s cultural editor, Flemming Rose, had learned of difficulties a Danish writer had in getting his children’s book about the prophet written. The editor thought that sounded like self-censorship right there in the State of Denmark.

Self-censorship! Man the ramparts! Don’t shoot till you see the whites of your own eyes!

I mean, what’s the proper remedy for self-censorship? If I cut off the hand that wags at me, do I not bleed? Yes I do, it’s my own friggin’ hand.

I’m trying to fathom the thinking on all sides of this issue. So Flemming Rose was one of those kids who realized at a certain age that he had never previously said the f-word to his parents (a word which in Danish means “pull my finger,” I imagine), so all at once said it to them and found out immediately why he had never said it before. It was because, before then, he had had some sense. After that, he had no sense at all, as any that remained was knocked out of him, so he continued behaving senselessly to this day, and here we are. This is what they call the cycle of abuse.

Sure, (understatement alert) the widespread violent reaction has been dysfunctional also. What is especially dysfunctional is the reaction that says, “Oh yeah, well then, here are twelve hideous cartoons that will be certain to insult the Jews, or, now we will burn American flags, or we will burn the embassy of the country your paper is printed in.” “Oh, well, if you’re going to insult me like that, I’m going to punch this other guy. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Is it too much to ask people professing to defend a religion of peace to be merely nonviolent? Nonviolent doesn’t mean peaceful, it just means not hurting people. You can still raise a lot of hell within those parameters.

I’d wish a pox on everyone’s house but it seems to have already arrived. Now it’s become necessary for an ex-president to warn the general public against substituting anti-Islam for anti-Semitism, and that some of the cartoons in question did in fact cross the line from political commentary to religious intolerance. That would be the same ex-president that came up with, “Don't ask; don’t tell.”

A little more than five hundred years ago Muslim Spain had a similar rule regarding non-Muslims, which made it more, not less, tolerant than the rest of Europe. Just slightly more than two hundred years ago American revolutionaries were publishing tracts under fake names because there was no freedom of speech here yet. As recently as the 1940s Europe fought a big war in which freedom of speech was a peripheral issue.

Maybe that’s a clue. It wasn’t much later that I got my first chemistry set, and had the urge to blow stuff up with my new toy.