Another Moron Reads the Gray Lady

Regular readers of this humble “weblog” know that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have oft criticized letters to the editor that appear in The New York Times. In fact, our routine perusals of the missives in the Paper of Record have led us to believe that most of its readers are complete nincompoops.

Allow us to offer an example. By now, dear reader, you have undoubtedly heard about the Danish Muhammad cartoon fiasco, a story that brilliantly exposes journalists’ unequal concern over Muslim and Christian complaints regarding anti-religious sentiments. When Christians politely offer their feelings of distaste over some nasty depiction of Jesus, they are deemed knuckle-dragging hicks. Somehow, this is not the case when Muslims threaten far worse in regard to unkind images of their prophet. Perhaps this is because the “knuckle-dragging” Christians, for all their troglodytic ire, wouldn’t actually kill anyone. Would that this could be said about their enlightened and oppressed Islamic counterparts!

So what, you may be wondering, does a Times reader think about this brouhaha? Thankfully, all but one of the missives in the “Muhammad Cartoon Furor” section of Saturday’s Gray Lady were generally reasonable. But one epistle is so obtuse we simply had to offer a portion of it.

Penned by someone called Hala Innab, a resident of that tony city of Amman, Jordan, the letter in question ends with the following two paragraphs:

The function of newspapers is to inform, not to inflame. At a time when the relationship between Islamic and Western countries is strained, one would expect more from reputable newspapers.

How would Americans feel if The New York Times decided to print jokes about the Jewish Holocaust or African slavery, just to test our reaction?

An interesting question, that. In fact, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” feel like answering it.

Now, never mind the fact that Arab dailies routinely offer anti-Semitic cartoons to their readers. We’re pretty sure that they’ve printed their share of distasteful references to the Holocaust, but perhaps Halal Innab doesn’t consider such newspapers “reputable.” And we’re inclined to agree, insofar as such countries don’t tend to have papers free from government control.

But, in order to humor—though not incite—Hala Innab, let’s pretend that The New York Times published a cartoon that offered a joke about the Holocaust, “just to test our reaction.”

We have the sneaking suspicion that Americans would not burn American flags, call for the murder of the Times’ editors and the amputation of the cartoonists’ hands. Further, we posit that non-Jewish Americans would not be beaten up in Israel, as a few Danish workers were in Saudi Arabia.

In short, we feel as if Americans would not act like a bunch of barbarians. So why, exactly, is the chuckleheaded Hala Innab defending these savages?