Sooey Says

The terrible or not so terrible thing to have to admit about this whole Freedom of Speech debate with regards to the complaint against Ezra Levant to the AHRC (and, of course, the complaint to the CHRC against his comrade-in-armchair, Mark Steyn) is that I have to defend their right to Freedom of Speech, even though neither man even believes in my most basic human rights on account of - I'm a woman.

However, such is life, which women really have to suck up - and twice as hard as men - before facing an eternity of damnation in hell for that whole apple thing in the Garden of Eden.

And in the case of Ezra Levant, the complainer, another outrageous Rightwinger and Sexist Asshole of an Imam, is such a less-than-legitimate character, to my mind, that I really couldn't stand it if he were to win this ridiculous case. It will be quite delicious, however, when the women who have made complaints against HIM win theirs.

Oh, the irony. How it snowballs in these situations of good intentions having paved the way to hell.

In any case, back to the REAL point of this entry.

I was thinking about the Danish cartoons and Mohammed and how stupid it all is that we have a system that allows for complaints about mocking prophets to gain any traction at all, and how the Right raises as part of its defence of Christianity vis a vis Islam, the supposed fact that all sorts of people make fun of Jesus and nobody says "Boohoo" about it, when I suddenly asked myself (aloud and on the street, too, I was that revelated), "Is that really true?"

Think about it. When was the last time you saw a cartoon of say, a white Mary giving birth to a black Jesus while a black Joseph mugs to the newspaper reader, his arm raised in a black power salute?

That's right. Never. At least, not in a mainstream newspaper you haven't. In fact, you'll notice that mainstream newspapers even capitilize "He" when referencing Jesus, so reverential are they to this very day, 2,008 years after his birth, of their readers sensibilities.

So, although Ezra Levant had every right to publish those Danish cartoons mocking Mohammed, particularly if it was a last ditch effort (which he would have owed to his creditors) to save his now bankrupt regional rightwing rag catering to a small group of Reform minded Albertans and a handful of other likeminded Canadians - it's highly unlikely that he would have published a cartoon depicting the above scene to broaden its readership to include readers like me - now is it?

Hell, Dear Reader, NO mainstream newspaper in this country would publish such a cartoon. And you know it, and I know it, and they know it, and Ezra Levant knows it. Sure, I think all of our mainstream newspapers most certainly should have published the Danish cartoons - particularly once the reaction to them became the story - and the fact that they didn't says a lot about them - doesn't it?

BUT, just in case you were falling for the notion that we're being forced to treat Mohammed with a reverence formerly reserved only for Jesus, think again, Dear Reader. Anything I've read about Mohammed in the mainstream media reveals him to be very unlike the peace loving Jesus (who, if the Bible is at all accurate, would seem to have been inciting the masses to Communist Revolution) and a lot more like, well, Osama Bin Laden.

That's the fact, Jack. Because I didn't know anything about Mohammed before CanWest et al started doing editorials and articles about him and my impression of him is pretty much the same as my impression of Osama Bin Laden and the guy making the complaint against Ezra Levant to the AHRC.

Anyway, my point is, Dear Reader, (Gawd, the straying from the point that Free Speech engenders, eh?) that hypocrisy looms largest in a Freedom of Speech debate when Rightwingers are involved because, well, because of the White Man's Burden. See, the White Man's Burden requires that the White Man have the Burden of Free Speech, but that everyone else can pretty much go fuck herself because she's not a white man, now is she, but she should defend the White Man's Burden of Free Speech because it's the right thing to do.

So it goes and was ever thus, I'm afraid, and perhaps forever will be. So while it's incumbent upon us in the West to publish cartoons depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban because that's who we know Mohammed to be, even if his followers can't see it, don't bother going looking for a cartoon of a, say, Jesus rallying the disciples under a flag displaying the hammer and the sickle while He presides over the wedding of two men in your morning newspaper.

And even if you were to see such a thing, you'll note that the "He" will be capitalized to offset the ensuing offence to readers followed by a mass cancelling of subscriptions that scares our newspaper owners a helluva lot more than any old Muslim riots halfway across the world do.

Alas, one magazine you will be sure NOT to see such a cartoon in is the now defunct Western Standard.

Rah, rah. You go, Ezra Grrl.