What if the cartoons were mocking Jesus? (LAUGH AND BARF ALERT)

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | February 19, 2006 | MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

[Chi-townChief]

Opinions Are Like Belly Buttons (everybody has one) -- aka: Brown Picks Lint from His Navel.

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Odds are that you would not be offended by seeing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, seeing as how Muslims are a scant minority of this newspaper's readers.

But how would you feel about it if we ran a cartoon depicting Jesus Christ in a priest's garb sodomizing a choirboy to illustrate the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church?

I'll bet some of you would have a slightly different reaction to that.

Or what if that same cartoon depicted the choirboy as African-American, in light of the alleged abuse at St. Agatha's in North Lawndale?

Just reading the description probably causes the hair to stand up on the back of some of your necks, as I well appreciate.

Words can be powerful tools, pictures even more so. I considered substituting a milder description than sodomizing, just to tone it down. Self-censorship, you see.

But what if I took it even further, what if the cartoon's caption somehow incorporated Jesus using the "N" word? Or just to clarify that the point I'm trying to make is not based on race, let's make the choirboy a white girl and the caption with Jesus using the "C" word.

That's entirely different than the Muhammad cartoons, you may say.

The Muhammad cartoons are nowhere near as offensive as what I'm describing, you think.

Well, apparently they are to Muslims.

It's great to hear all the support that's being voiced around the country right now for the First Amendment in light of the Muhammad cartoon controversy -- all of it coming from people egging us on to print the cartoons.

Yes, we have the right to print the Danish newspaper's cartoons, just as we would have the right to print a cartoon such as the offensive ones I have imagined.

Having the freedom to print what we want carries some responsibility to consider how it will affect those on the receiving end, which is a balancing act we face every day.

Pushing people's buttons

I'll bet my imaginary Jesus Christ cartoon could get a few protesters outside the Sun-Times, and if we told the protesters to buzz off, citing freedom of the press, I'll bet we could get some death threats, too. Rioting in the streets? Probably not. Unless we kept it up.

Maybe you think I'm missing the point. The real issue, you think, is the violent rioting in the Muslim world and that Muslims need to understand that they can't kill people because they don't like what's in the newspaper.

How exactly does publishing the cartoons here serve that end? Or do you just feel the need to prove that we're not afraid of any Muslim protesters?

One thing I've learned since I started writing this column is how easy it is to push people's buttons, and I'm not even the most skilled in-house practitioner of the art.

[gogeo]

Reading this cr@p, I don't conclude he's made a point...if he got death threats from a Christian 1) Would he take the threat seriously? and 2) Would church authorities encourage the practice?

I conclude that they give an IQ test before they hire columnists, and hire the ones that flunk..."HERE'S YOUR SIGN!"

[AmericanChef]

Cripes - it's not how we would feeeeeel that's the issue. It's how we act out the feeeeeelings. Duh! The left is increcibly dense.

[Bon mots]

[OpusatFR]

We already have a prancing Christ in the form of a play.

I haven't gutted any actors because of it. I usually ignore puerile attempts to denigrate God. It seems rather silly in the context of who is Creator and who is createe...

The problem with Islam is that it is an externally enforced belief. Christianity is an internal belief system that changes the spirit itself.

Islam does not deal with the spirit, but the flesh. I'd have to consign it to the World instead of the heavenly realm.

[TalBlack]

Jesus Christ HAS been depicted as a sodomite. He HAS been depicted as a fornicator--and in productions a HELL of a lot more substantial than a cartoon.

The cartoonist 'Martlett' once drew a cartoon about as offensive as the 'bomb in the turban' cartoon. It was printed without hesitation, apparently, by Long Island Newsday.

It depicted Pope John Paul II. An arrow pointing to His Holiness' head and the caption "Upom this rock I will build My Church".

No one rioted.

Newsday began it's terminal slide.

[brothers4thID]

The author should check out the webcomics "Alien Vs Predator" and "Penny Arcade". Both have running story lines involving Christ. The comics are amusing and ironic- which the much debated Dutch cartoons were trying to be.

[Bon mots]

What is that photo? If you tell me they are mohammedans
assaulting a non-mohammedan youth over these cartoons,
I will have a 5-cap answer and then a 5-cap follow up.

I am not sure.
It looks like Muslim men converting an unwilling Christian boy to Islam. Looks like it takes six of them and a metal pipe too.

But don't worry.
The European governments and Main-Stream Media assure us that it's not about race.
It's not about religion either.

On top of that, it's all our fault!

That white boy was probably in a Muslim neighborhood anyway,
so he was certainly looking to start trouble.
</sarcasm>

[cardinal4]

The bottom line is, that despite our revulsion to what may be printed, Westerners, Christians and Jews wouldnt riot and burn Missions and Consulates over it..

[Doogle]

...???...like it hasn't happen before?

[Mike Darancette]

What if the cartoons were mocking Jesus?

They would have gotten a government grant and the artist would be up for the Pulitzer Prize.

[Krankor]

Mr Brown makes an interesting point when he says,

Having the freedom to print what we want carries some responsibility to consider how it will affect those on the receiving end, which is a balancing act we face every day.

I wonder if he feels the same way about the Abu Ghraib photos? When he talks about how it will affect "those on the receiving end", he's of course referring to anyone who was offended by the photos. But how concerned was Mr. Brown about the affect it would have on our men and women in Iraq. Anyone who published or broadcast those pictures knew the insurgents would use them to inspire attacks against the coalition forces. They knew al Quaeda would use the photos to recruit jihadists and suicide bombers. We have no idea how many of our brave young men and women died because journalists decided to publish those photographs. But the smug Mr. Brown certainly does know one thing- he understands if he features the Mohammed cartoons in his column that, like the soldiers and marines in Iraq, there's a good chance he'll find himself on the "receiving end" for a change.

[BenLurkin]

" most anger was non-violently directed at the federal government for financing such literal waste."

Exactly.

But who knows? The day may come when Christian's 'take to the streets' -- except it would more likely be 'take to the rooftops'.

[feedback doctor]

markbrown@suntimes.com

I read your article and the key line is this: "I'll bet some of you would have a slightly different reaction to that."

"Slightly" is the key word.

Yes if you ran some of the cartoons you imagined some people would be upset. Do you think they would be burning down your building trying to kill you if you ran those cartoons? Nah, but they'd be upset. Attacks on Christianity are common. Attacks on the church are common, many justified. I still am waiting for the anti-Semitic pogrom that is supposed to happen after Me Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ."

"I'll bet my imaginary Jesus Christ cartoon could get a few protesters outside the Sun-Times, and if we told the protesters to buzz off, citing freedom of the press, I'll bet we could get some death threats, too. Rioting in the streets? Probably not. Unless we kept it up."

Well, if that happened, the death threats, you would stand up and defend your right to free speech saying you will not kowtow to extremists. And you would be right. But the fact is though you might get death threats, I bet no one would die.
The liberal hero Bill Clinton says the publishers of the cartoons should be prosecuted. Do you agree? And the cartoons are offensive? Please tell me how they are offensive. Most are benign. One shows Mohammed with a 'bomb turbine." With how the muslim world has complete silence on Islamic terrorism, I think it is true. The problem is that the muslims think ANY depiction of Mohammed is blasphemy. We have now seen that they will riot and kill and offer large sums of money to kill anyone that offends them.
Let me tell you other things that offend them: You not bowing to Mecca offends them.
The women in this country that have jobs, or go to schools, or choose who they will marry, that offends Muslims.
In England a town government will not allow any employee to have any thing on their desk or person that represents a pig, out of fear of offending. So if you have a picture of your child with Winnie the Pooh you are offending muslims. You are a hatemonger. If you eat pork, you offend muslims. You right to free speech is offensive.

First they just wanted to destroy Israel, but I was in America so I didn't care. Then they wanted to suicide bomb any Jews, but I was gentile so I was silent.Then they wanted to make a European newspaper give up it's right to free speech, but hey, I was safe in America, so I kept quiet. Then they decided to burn and riot and threaten newspapers, then I saw their point.

You opened with the comment: "Opinions Are Like Belly Buttons (everybody has one) " Courage and guts are not like opinions though.
You don't look so hot waving a white flag Mr. Brown.

Signed,

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[BJungNan]

But how would you feel about it if we ran a cartoon depicting Jesus Christ in a priest's garb sodomizing a choirboy to illustrate the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church?

They are so out of touch with reality to bring this up. The image of the Virgin Mary has been up on this CNN site for the last five years.

"The Holy Virgin Mary" by British artist Chris Ofili. He used elephant dung and images of female genitalia in that work. The art was paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

The question for this lame-stream newspaper is this, if the art the Muslim's object to was paid for by taxpayers and the Muslim's were complaining about that, whose side would you come down on.

[BJungNan]

Interesting in this picture...does it look like the guy on the right is trying to stop his friend from using the pipe?

And, what would have happend had the guy they were beating been carrying a handgun?

[jordan8]

Muhammad's newest bride, American liberalism. This is a race issue, not a religious one. The left is soft on Islam not for reasons of religious tolerance but because they're not white and they're not Western, they are indeed anti-Western. Any hint that a non-white, non-Western culture is a threat to the existence of the West is a blow against multiculturalism, one-worldism and mass-immigration into the West, it might make Westerners think that maybe it's a good idea to try and preserve their cultures and nations and that must be prevented at all costs.

[Dengar01]

Why did I cancel my subscription to the Chicago Sun Times?

Oh yeah, because of their terrible coverage and wacko left editorials. For further proof, look at anything written by Roeper.

[Salman]

Oddly enough, there might be violent protests from Muslims over mockery of Jesus.

Jesus is the second greatest prophet of Allah (according to Muslims).

[Volunteer]

I am a Roman Catholic and am subjected to jokes about my faith.

I have never, ever started a fight over it.

I never burned a flag because of it.

I never broke windows because of it.

I never threaten to kill anyone because of it.

Can we, once and for all, stop the lie that Islam is a religion of peace?

[Dewy]

Muslims worship a picture!

Christians worship a risen Saviour, in spirit and truth.

John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.