Fight the power, weirdos.

(Originally published 2/3/2006)

"Jesus, Buddha, Allah, I love you all!" Homer Simpson

I am a tree-hugging, bed-wetting, what-the-h*ll-is-Michael-Dukakis-up-to-these-days, card-carrying Liberal. I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we‘ve ever had and that Socialists make very good points. I think children should be told what homosexuality is at an early age and that Michael Moore loves this country more than Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove put together. I would gladly give half of my paycheck to the government if it insured free health care for every American and Art and Music programs in every school. My eyes get misty when I watch documentaries on PBS about the struggles of Native Americans and when I read about cute fluffy animals on the verge of extinction I wanna take to the streets in protest. I am proud to be the type of American that Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coultier despise.

Recently, there was a lot of news about a situation that I guess falls under the category of Religous Insensitivity. My first reaction, because I’m an educated person who would never pretend to know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes was to think, "Oh, they’ve been offended. People should be more considerate." This was my Liberal training, my God-given gift of reasonable judgment. And nine times out of ten when you hear about Religous Insensitivity that is just the case. Some idiot thought out loud and hurt someone else’s feelings, someone who they have no idea what it is to be like (for example, Sean Hannity or that b*tch from "The View" Elisabeth Hasselbeck).

But the reaction stirred by Religous Insensitivity occurring in the Middle East right now over a Danish cartoon is giving every gun-toting redneck in America another reason to hate "them Iraqi terrorists over thar." The more I thought about the way that these people are behaving in response to a drawing, a doodle by some yodeling goofball, my Liberal sense of understanding morphed into Bill O’Reilly’s take on the world. I felt like Charlton Heston. "Shoot ‘em now. Ask questions later."

What the h*ll is wrong with these people? In almost every episode of "South Park" a cartoon Jesus takes God’s name in vain. It doesn’t make the news. Why? Because the only people that show offense to such things in our culture are the crazy "Christian" types. And all they ever do in protest are make brief appearances on talk shows, form letter writing campaigns, or put Bush/Cheney bumper stickers on their cars. No "Christian" in their having been offended by "South Park" has taken to the streets with machine guns and taken hostages. (I am putting the term Christians in quotation marks to differentiate between cool Christians like me and crazy "Christians," the ones who’d protest outside of an AIDS victim’s funeral and give money to Pat Robertson, people who, in my opinion, are no way Christian.)

When the radical types get rowdy in our country and shoot up abortion clinics, even Conservatives think they’re loony. I realize that it’s blasphemous in Islam to create an image of Muhammad, but people, please. Hostages? Aren’t you being a bit dramatic over a cartoon? Trust me, just like that time I wore a dog collar out, you’re gonna feel really stupid about this in a few years.

We overreact in America too. Right now people in America are overreacting about lots of things: the Joel Stein article in the LA Times that said people who are against the war cannot honestly be for the troops, the show "The Book of Daniel" on NBC, and whatever Hillary Clinton might be up to these days. We love to overreact! We did it when Ellen Degeneres came out of the closet. And when we found out that the kids from Columbine liked Marilyn Manson. Or when a certain sitting President got his swerve on in the Oval Office. Sure, we holler and argue and forward emails of outrage back and forth. We vow to never watch certain networks or buy certain albums or see certain movies or vote for certain candidates. But none of us, no matter how offended we get, kidnap someone at gunpoint.

All cultural differences aside, I am dying to know whether or not these men have jobs. I have wet dreams about not having to work but if it means having so much time on my hands that suddenly it makes sense to buy a gun and take people hostage every time someone on Fox News p*sses me off then no thanks. I don’t think these guys have jobs. A job would keep them too busy to carry on like their dogs just died over a cartoon (an idled mind is a troubled mind). And why are they masked? Maybe they‘re supposed to be at work and don’t want their bosses to recognize them. Maybe they called out sick to go kidnappin’. And why are these terrorist types so quick to group everyone together? They hate America, so they destroy the Twin Towers filled to the brim with Americans. They are mad at Europe, so they take Europeans hostage. How stupid is this? That’s like getting mad at the dog for p*ssing on the floor and then beating the cat just because they have the misfortune of sharing the same space.

I’ve often envisioned myself in a hostage situation. "Look, Buddy," I’d tell the gunman, "I hate most Americans probably just as much as you do. But killing me is just gonna waste a bullet. If you wanna get a reaction out of the American government, have your government stop investing in American corporations and selling your oil to our country. If you looked closely at it, Kiddo, it’s not really Americans you hate. It’s your leaders who cater to our government’s every whim that you should be riding around on airplanes with."

I know that my refusal to understand their anger may seem to be a refusal to understand their culture, which would make me a Grade-A certified ignorant close-minded American. And maybe that’s so. Because a culture that caters to such extremism and violence over cartoons is not a culture I care to understand. And if it seems that I’m grouping all the people who were offended by the cartoon with terrorists, I’m not. I am, however, grouping the people who were offended by the cartoon and started kidnapping people over it with terrorists. Because they are terrorists.

I know that Islam is a religion that teaches peace and tolerance. Most religions do. My confusion, my criticism, is towards the behavior of Middle-Eastern societies in general. I guess I’ll never understand a society where no one makes a peep when a woman who was raped is stoned in the streets, but fury over a cartoon unites the country. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to understand it.