Letters to the Editor
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Opus and Asses
Unbelievable that anyone would find this weeks Opus objectionable, and unbelievable that you would force those wishing to see it to a barrage of asses, in your ads for Washlet. Your ads are clearly more objectionable to many, myself included.
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Finally
Finally someone comments on the highly objectionable parade of smiling anuses. This is just one straw short of sending me away from Salon forever.
Really really really dump the smiling anus ad campaign. I will never patronize this company.
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I think many of the decisions to alter or otherwise avoid running this strip are based on the anti-US foreign policy thrust of the cartoon, and are only using any Muslim-based issues as an excuse.
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At least some folks seem to get it-
Despite what appears to be a barrage of "This comic was great because it lambasts that US! The US should quit sticking its nose where it doesn't belong!" posts, at least a few folks are capable of posting something different. The US isn't "imposing" some ridiculous "imperial will" here, it's trying to maintain economic interests in a region that's become naturally self-destructive, for Pete's sake. The US isn't sending troops of people over to the middle east in order to foster punk-style haircuts or make women wear thongs- most US corporations couldn't honestly care less about what the cultures over there do. But we, by and large, do depend on the resources the nations there provide.
We need the middle east, at the very least, until our country can wholly subsist at the same economic level as today, without them.
Which means, we need several things- free economies to foster positive trade (and competition) and political and social stability to ensure the availability of the supply. The cultural mores of the nations aren't an issue, as long as the aforementioned things are intact.
On the other hand, places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, and an ever-expanding segment of Asia, are squandering that resource. The misguided social ambitions of people like Amenijad, coupled with the hundreds of years of chaos sown by the violent opposing sects of Islam (Shia and Sunni) create a horribly unstable environment. Everywhere that these theocracies are dominant, they do several things- get into fights with their neighbors, stifle economic growth, and repress the populace. And then, when their populations begin to starve, the leaders use violence, harsher repression, and the scapegoat of "the west" in order to stay in power.
People that blame the US just don't get it- including, I'm afraid, the author of this comic.
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My Error, with Thx to AKA Smith
In what's called "metaphysical" art, a little detail can change a lot of meaning, and the cartoon under discussion is a lot like that. My first take on the matter included what I now believe was faulty, namely, that cool dude Steve accepted her free choice, i.e., to wear a burqa, if without the veil.
AKA Smith wrote, in part, as follows:
"Notice that Steve is so certain that Lola will bend to his will that he walks away making certain that the boy understands what is what where women are concerned. He wants her in that bikini to get the sexual revolution to be what HE wanted it to be. It never occurs to him that she may have other ideas."
The more I went back to the toon, the more it appears now that Stevie boy left just as Lola came out and never saw her. That alters one's interpretation, to be sure.
What it alters critically is any presumption that Steve is willing to accept just any ol' free choice by a Muslim woman. When the cartoonist has him wail "America rocks!" the point seems without question to be that America's will for Iraq is to twist their initial desire to be free of Saddam (Lola's decision to forgo the veil) into one in which they accept a version of freedom paralleled on wearing the bikini. Hard to see what other conclusion there can be than that the cartoonist compares the standard Arab man's approach to women with the American approach to freedom, an approach very roughly as chauvinistic as that of the Arab. 'If you want freedom,' we seem to be saying to the Iraqis, 'then you shall have it precisely as we would prefer you have it.'
And it is to that presumption, apparently, that we get the 'America rocks' comment, as if to say we throw our cultural weight around rather as an Arab (or American red neck) would dictate to a woman.
Comments: This does not change, at least for me, the humor of the piece, as that seems still to rest on the cultural parallels richly drawn (as indicated in my first post). The question is what we are to think of the cartoonist's intent, to the extent he has rendered it reasonably clear.
Two possibilities--either he agrees with what he portrays in Steve's ranting, or, he is taking Steve as the example, the 'type' of a dolt. In the latter event he is casting Steve as a perfect chauvinist, a perfectly blind nationalist after the fashion of a fundamentalist. And he would be allowing Steve to represent those who most seem to subscribe to Steve's view, a la George Bush and company.
Though the content doesn't disprove either take, I am far more prepared to accept the latter view, that Breathed is setting up Steve to be an ass. To me, this in no way suggests that the cartoonist berates or otherwise belittles America, but that there is reason to interpret American policy toward Iraq as in line with Stevie boy, and if true, it is wrong. Truly it is difficult to argue against a point like that.
The only offense an American might take is the cultural comparison in which a segment of American men are permitted to share the worst of Arab chauvinism. I, for one, am pleased he points out that these jerks do indeed exist. And it does not alter in the slightest my judgment that the cartoonist has no love for the Arab ways any more than for what he perceives to be a morally stilted foreign policy blunder. Which means that relativism arguments fall fatally flawed. You can't convict him of cultural chauvinism. If anything, he demonstrates his dislike for chauvinism wherever found, in whatever culture.
Comment by pvlman seems to hit the nail on the head--
"Perhaps the message? Like Fatima didn't bend to Steve's will, the middle east isn't going bend to the will of the USA. Hell I don't know, but I doubt it was worth any censorship."