The Iranians are renaming Danish Pastries "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad," to protest the Danish editorial cartoons.
This sort of thing can escalate. Next thing you know, Canada will rename Brazil Nuts: "Rain Forest Nuts" in condemnation of Brazil's stewardship of the Amazon basin.
Then Chinese Food will instead be referred to as Oppressed People's Food and Kiwi Fruit will be called, well, Hairy Fruit, because that's what it should have been named in the first place.
China, of course, has a long history of human rights violations. New Zealand is just caught in the crossfire, because there isn't a type of food named after Australia, which has a degrading refugee process.
Personally, I've been offended by a few things written by New York blogger BL Ochman, so I'm going to remove those letters when they appear at the beginning of a word. As a protest against BL's frequent mistreatment of the human language, in future I will write and speak thusly:
"On a **eak winter morning, I pulled on my **ue jeans, ate some **intzes and **ood sausage, then sat down to post to my **og."
And don't get me started on the verbal gymnastics that will be required to form sentences while avoiding words that might imply I condone the fashion atrocities of Courtney Love, the bully tactics of Apple Inc., the human rights abuses of George Bush, and the offensive actions of hundreds of other public figures, cities, countries and neighbourhoods.
Communication will become increasingly difficult as I add new words to my banned list, but at least my act of publicly condemning immorality in this world will accomplish something (not sure what yet, but I'll report back when I figure it out).
My campaign of protest may seem intolerant and futile at first, but since when has that been an impediment to anyone?
Thanks to Allan Jenkins for the Danish response to pastry situation, and Bill Doskoch for an update on the cartoon backlash. And BL, I wasn't really all that offended, but the conceit of being offended was too good to pass up. ;-)
Tags: banned cartoons danish humour blogs protest
I used to read a lot of travel magazines, but not so much any more. Following this Seattle couple on their journey has been fun, partly because it's not neatly wrapped up into a feature article, with colourful locals and a pithy moral for each location.
ull, boring Al Gore is raising the temperature of public debate on climate change (you remember him, the nerd who thought global warming and the knowledge economy were important). He is having a renaissance as the champion of the environment.
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