'Toon Wars

I think the collective peoples of the world need to relax a little bit. Cartoons are not a good enough reason to riot, kill, murder or maim. A few squiggly black lines, a caricature, or a doodle is not enough to get me upset, even if it were to insult my entire way of life or my deepest beliefs. I am confident enough in my own convictions that if someone makes a disparaging cartoon about say, atheism or the United States, I can look at it go “Wow, that is lame” and then go about my business. Not a big deal. Life goes on. I don’t feel the need to kill anyone.

So some Danes drew a couple of unflattering pictures of Mohammed. So what? People have been drawing insulting cartoons of blacks and Jews for hundreds of years. They don’t often go out and burn down embassies. Not over cartoons anyway.

Sure, sure, it’s against the rules in the Koran somewhere about having images of people or Mohammed or whatever. Yeah, well hopefully there is also some stuff in there about KILLING people over CARTOONS. If there isn’t, maybe there should be.

There is a popular saying these days, “ An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” How about we add, “A cartoon for a cartoon?”

I can imagine a world where wars are no longer fought with guns and bombs and tanks and planes, but with pens and brush and ink and paper. I think that might not be such a bad world to live in. The mightiest nations would be those with the best cartoonists, dealing vicious strikes of humor and satire to their enemies.

I caught a bit of news story on NPR today about Iran calling for Holocaust cartoons, and then an Israeli counter-strike of making their own Holocaust cartoons. It’s sort of bizarre, but this gives me a small glimmer of hope for the future. I am not naïve enough to believe that people will stop hating each other over minor differences. However, if Iran and Israel can agree that cartoons are the best way to deal with each other, that would be pretty cool. A little bit better than a suicide bomber on a bus or a nuclear bomb over a city.