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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003
12:34 - Nauseating Cartooning

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Okay-- just as an aside or a preamble, towards those who tar Little Green Footballs as a "hate site", I just have to wonder at Charles Johnson's reaction to the recent death of Arab News cartoonist M. Khalil, creator of hundreds of blatantly offensive, blatantly anti-Israel and anti-American cartoons, and how it jives with that accusation:
Arab News cartoonist Mahmoud Kahil has died following surgery in a British hospital. Kahil was a talented illustrator whose gift was, unfortunately, often misused in the service of a corrupt regime. On the day of his passing I choose to remember and respect his talent, and think of what he might have achieved if nurtured by a free society.
Somehow I can't imagine, say, an Aryan Nation site posting a message like this over the death of, say, Spike Lee.

With that in mind, here's something that makes me wonder just what the ACLU thinks it stands for these days: the USA PATRIOT Acrt Show. Nothing less than a gallery of some of the most vile and tasteless post-9/11 cartooning this country (and the world) has yet seen, presented as a celebration of civil liberties and freedom of speech, things that have (evidently) been beaten out of workaday Americans by FBI agents going door-to-door with sjamboks and electrodes on a daily basis for the past eighteen months.

It's no surprise that Ted Rall is one of the featured "artists"; but the site gathers together dozens more like him, from all over the world, united by a common voice that speaks out from under the crushing heel of American patriotic brainwashing, braving the horrors of post-9/11 state censorship: 9/11 was Amerika's just reward.

(I'm not even going to include an inline thumbnail of any of these, because each one carries a red tagline: CARTOON CANNOT BE USED IN ANY WAY WITHOUT ARTIST'S PERMISSION! Yessir! Go to the site yourself if you're that curious.)

Some of these cartoons proudly carry the banner of "BANNED" (well, at least, one of them does); it waves it like an arm-tattoo, claiming that the cartoon was pulled from papers due to Big Brother's omniscient information-filtering mechanism. Never mind that the papers actually pulled it because it was offensive and tasteless, not because it antagonized The Party. I mean, come on-- what are these people snorting? Why is it so hard to distinguish a nation of uncensored weblogs and mostly-peaceful un-cracked-down-upon anti-war demonstrations... from a police state? Why is it that the hip and urbane treat Soviet-era propaganda posters and tales of the KGB as quaintly amusing and attractive, while at the same time whimpering about those with unpopular opinions being mercilessly silenced right here at home? Doesn't anybody see the existence proof in action-- or, more accurately, the lack-of-existence proof?

I don't know if the ACLU thinks it's being heroic and honorable in sponsoring this presentation, but it's certainly succeeded in turning one person into a contemptuous skeptic.
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© Brian Tiemann