Comics and the State of the World

Some people may wonder why I keep covering things like the Don Imus debacle and keep harping on the one-sided racial "diversity" issues in America and it comes down to one, very basic thing: Freedom of Speech.

Now, I have a real kicker of a story about this basic, "First Amendment Right," of the American Constitution but in order for me to try to get some semblance of sleep at some point during this month, it'll have to wait until tomorrow. But, I noticed that The Comics Journal is still keeping a close eye on the continuing Danish cartoons atrocities that happened quite some time ago. Mind you, there are still trials going on and so forth, so there is still news to report and obviously, since it is comics-related, they're very relevant to the periodical. And while I cover a wide range of entertainment in general, I do tend to focus a lot on comics, but I haven't covered this story.

There is a very heavy double-standard in all fields of entertainment nowadays, and that double-standard basically goes something like this:

Minorities - of any kind, be it racial, cultural, religious, or what have you - are pretty much free to say whatever they want; white people are not. I'm not sure how it is that Anglican Caucasians have come to be viewed as the single "majority" in the world, but I don't have any real collegiate learning, so I guess it could be true. I don't know. The British Empire and all that, you know. My personal opinion is that it has to do with America's domination of the entertainment industries in general (as far as I know, it's still our major export).

At any rate, the truly violent and outspoken of these minorities always seem to be the victims. While the Danish comics flap involves Muslims - as do many of the religiously-based "aggressions" of our modern age - we here in America face a very strong racial divide, and this is why I've been focusing on that. Yes, the Danish cartoon thing was awful and its effects are still being felt, but I see a direct correlation between the people who stirred up that sort of atrocity and people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; I find them all demagogues who seek to incite racial hatred and promote racial strife whenever possible. They do this for a host of reasons, but the very one that is almost always lacking is the main one: the actual racism that's supposed to exist. That's where these matters differ.

The Danish newspapers that published the offending cartoons knew damned well that showing depictions of the Muslim Prophet was against Muslim beliefs and they did it anyway. That it's a matter of free speech cannot be debated; what is in debate is whether or not it was in good taste. I say it wasn't. Just because you can offend someone doesn't mean you should, and even though you may have a Constitutional Right to do so doesn't make it acceptable social behavior. Obviously, the people who turned it into a huge social movement when it really didn't have to be such took things too far (ala Tijuana Brawley), but they had a right to be offended by the cartoons - not a right to be so outraged that they committed murders and marched in streets like a pack of mad hookers, but a right to be upset, nonetheless.

On quite the other hand, America finds a new racial outrage every day and almost none of them actually turn out to have any merit whatsoever. This is a very obvious attempt to control what people say, what they think, and how they act and react to one another on a racial level. And it always involves Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Yet neither of these men have ever appeared before a court to answer for any of the shit they've caused over any of these things - and Al Sharpton caused deaths! Jesse Jackson got on TV and slandered all Jewish people but he didn't lose his job!

Now, I do not agree that the newspapers should have run those cartoons and not just because they should have expected Muslims to react violently, but also because it was basically stirring the pot; I agree that they had a right to do so, but I think it socially irresponsible. On quite the other hand, I didn't find that Don Imus was socially irresponsible in his speech. I find that Sharpton, Jackson, the news outlets who continuously manufacture these stories, and others who take part in these debacles are socially irresponsible and should be taken to task!

In fact, on an [adult swim] show which aired last night - which was blatantly racist, throughout - I noticed that the end credits featured, very prominently, a song entitled, "Die, Cracker, Die!" Now, I don't find that necessarily offensive because I'm smart enough to recognize it for what it is: blatantly racist propaganda. But, of course, since it was done by a black person, it's not called that; it's called "Freedom of Speech." And you can't really defend it as comedy, satire, nor anything else just because it was on a comedic cartoon show; Don Imus' show was known for its humor!

[adult swim] - nor any other American television network of any kind - would ever, nor could they ever, feature the flip-side of a song with a title like that (think about what I mean). Never. They couldn't, even if they wanted to; they'd be sued by the ACLU, our good friends, Al and Jesse, featured on Oprah, lambasted in the press across the boards, fined out of existence - would soon appear in history books for God's sake!

The point, my point, is very simple: you can't have a "Freedom of Speech" for only certain classes of people, and America does exactly that. I'm not saying, "Well, they can call us crackers, so we should be able to call them anything we want to." I'm saying, "We can't call them slanderous, derogatory names because we'd be charged with a hate crime, so for there to be a true justice, a true sense of freedom and fairness and equality for all, allowing them to call us derogatory names isn't just socially irresponsible."

It's illegal.