|
Lines in the Sand Just how morally bankrupt is radical Islam? Hard as it was to do, the movement achieved a new low last month when thousands of believers firebombed embassies in Syria, Lebanon, and Indonesia and killed more than 120 random Christians in Nigeria over a few run-of-the mill cartoons. I smell a Nobel Peace Prize for Carsten Juste of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten for non-violently locating what may be the Achilles heel of Islamic Jihad and an honorable mention for the editor of every European paper that reprinted the cartoons in solidarity. Makes me wish I could draw. Of course, the problem was never really a cartoon. The problem is Khartoum. Raping and mutilating little African boys and girls in the name of Mohammed and you want what? Respect? Radical Islam may have chased 7’7” Manute Bol out of the Sudan, but it cannot stand on its own two feet. It has produced nothing of value and will continue to produce nothing of value. It is run not by men with ideas but by brats with inheritances. It speaks to other little men with tiny penises who talk of 72 virgins but can’t handle one real woman. Radical Islam without explosives is less than nothing. There has never been a shortage of stupid people roaming the Earth. But at least when the football hooligans from Manchester are done guzzling Boddington’s and bashing in skulls, they don’t wake up the next day and blow up the Birmingham locker room. Radical Islam is like a million unified Sons of Sam. It’s the Crips and Bloods without any scruples. As much as I hate virtually every cultural trend in America, these days I am unabashedly American. Give me plastic surgery shows, reality shows devoid of reality, and Simon Cowell humiliating 16-year-old altos from Raleigh, North Carolina. Give me Barry Bonds’ bloated, steroid-filled torso, the Botox-happy cast of Desperate Housewives, and Joan Rivers’ mummified head. Give me 100-percent financed homes, reverse mortgages, negative savings, and a real estate bubble with a remaining half-life the length of an episode of Trading Spaces. Give me iPod-carrying, Blackberry-clicking, ecstasy-popping spring-breakers taking daddy’s money and a suitcase full of morning-after pills down to Cancun. I want my MTV. Too bad the Bush administration had to dilute worldwide resolute contempt for radical Islam with perhaps the most ill-advised, misbegotten adventure in American military history. But there are other ways to fight the ground war we never got to fight. We can’t let a few brave cartoonists fight this one alone. Just as John F. Kennedy proclaimed, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” today we are all cartoonists. Grab a piece of paper. Pick up a pencil. Doodle something that looks vaguely like a bearded dude in a turban with a bomb strapped to his back. Now try a camel to go with it. Don’t worry whether it comes out looking like Hope or Crosby in Road to Morocco or Jackson Pollack on acid. Instead, feel proud knowing you’ve done your share to incite pointless bedlam in the radical Islamist community. And don’t spend too much time on the caption. A fatwa will be issued long before the caption is even read. Now, scan the image, blast it out to your friends, co-workers, and Imams, and wait for the fun to begin. Within minutes, thousands of brain-dead pseudo-Muslims should be rioting on your front lawn demanding death to the infidel. Which would be you. Scared? Don’t be. With any luck at all, you are now merely one of millions of amateur anti-radical Islamist cartoonists spreading cheer and sanity on the net. Sure these creeps want to impale you, stomp you, torch you, and string you from a bridge as the prophet commanded, but the problem is they are spread real thin. With your small act of electronic bravery, you have forced them to make critical decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources: Do I want to continue working on smuggling that dirty bomb into Portland, Oregon or go after the OfficeMax stock clerk in Nutley, New Jersey? Or how about that infidel gynecologist in Virginia Beach? This is where it gets very confusing and frustrating for terrorists. This is where while trying to choose from a virtually infinite supply of Salman Rushdies, they prematurely self-detonate. Don’t hold your breath for Gary Trudeau to save you. Dilbert is apolitical. Garfield is a cat. Charles Schultz is dead. Those highbrows at The New Yorker didn’t have the guts. However, the editors at the New York Press drew a line in the sand and wound up on the unemployment line. Over on the so-called Left Coast, the College Republicans of the University of California at Irvine held a little cartoon exhibit. No fatalities. Thanks for pointing the way, guys. First and foremost, this has got to be a grass roots movement. The good old days are gone. There is no Spike Jones singing Der Fuhrer’s Face. It now falls to each and every one of us to pass wind in the enemy’s face. Personally, I have no quarrel with any religion, cult, or rotisserie league so long as its members stick to killing each other. The American mob learned this lesson a long time ago, and virtually all their problems come from forgetting it. Even Scientologists usually know when to give it a rest. I don’t want any trouble. I am merely an iconoclastic son-of-a-bitch trying to save the world with sarcasm. But if a bunch of you radical Islamists are feeling lucky and would like to take a little break from stalking Wafa Sultan, take Route 78 in New Jersey west to exit 3, follow Route 22 west over the Delaware to the Palmer exit, veer right along Hackett Avenue, and make a left on Gruver, immediately past the Little League field. I’ll be waiting with a loaded rifle and thinking about how on September 11, 2001, you killed my classmate and friend for no reason at all. Click here to rant back. |