Stumble It!
We are all Danes now
"St. Francis Receives the Stigmata" (1596, Oil on wood, 247 x 171 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) by Villa Castelvecchi di Cigoli.
Not the one we had in mind, but our sis suggested St. Francis, and Googling led us to the Cigoli above, a suitable stand-in for the still elusive Baroque painting somewhere in our memory bank that was suggested by the image we got from our TV screen last night during State of the Union ceremonies in the House of Representatives Chambers in the Capitol Building (below).
"Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDR) Sufferers Receive the Stigmata" last night as their nemesis once again foils their best-laid plans.
Our use for comic effect of the much-loved Christian St. Francis's suffering to poke fun at the Democrats' maudlin keening as the party out of power called to mind the disagreeable controversy set off by a Danish newspaper's recent publication of a series of cartoon images of Mohammed.
This is by far the best drawn and most thought-provoking of the cartoons depicting Mohammed published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
The idea was to test whether the threat of Islamic terrorism had limited the freedom of expression in Denmark. Michelle Malkin -- of course -- has been all over the story since shortly after it began last September with a series of articles in The Brussels Journal, which explained:
Islam is no laughing matter. The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of twelve cartoons about the prophet Muhammad. According to Islam it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper's offices and kill the cartoonists.
The publication led to outrage among the Muslim immigrants living in Denmark. 5,000 of them took to the streets to protest. Muslim organisations have demanded an apology, but Juste rejects this idea: “We live in a democracy. That’s why we can use all the journalistic methods we want to. Satire is accepted in this country, and you can make caricatures,” he said. The Danish imam Raed Hlayhel reacted with the statement: “This type of democracy is worthless for Muslims. Muslims will never accept this kind of humiliation. The article has insulted every Muslim in the world.”
Under the headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God," the French newspaper France Soir ran a front page cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud. It shows the Christian deity saying: "Don't complain, Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."
"The country now faces an international boycott from Muslim nations whose fist-clenched protesters led chants this week of "War on Denmark, Death to Denmark" while firing bullets in the air," writes Michelle in her latest JWR column.
In response to the boycott of Danish products from Muslim nations, bloggers from all over the world -- including Muslims like Egyptian Sandmonkey, who thinks the whole thing is "retarded" -- have mounted a "Buy Danish" campaign. We're suggesting Danish Vodka as a tasteful choice. Be sure to check out our fellow Cotillion Babe Beth of My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy for lots of righteous indignation and links to places where you can buy Danish foods online.
"Meanwhile," writes Michelle in her aptly titled blogpost "First, they came for the cartoonists" today, Judith Apter Klinghoffer notes that other papers around the world are reprinting the forbidden cartoons. She's challenging American MSM outlets to do the same. We had been mildly annoyed with Cindy Sheehan's all-about-me antics at the State of the Union last night when she tried to make a spectacle of herself to embarrass the president, but she's small potatoes compared to the insidiousness of some of the followers of Islam amongst us:
On Tuesday afternoon in advance of the State of the Union address, the Council on American-Islamic Relations issued an ultimatum warning President Bush to "avoid the use of hot-button terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' 'militant jihadism,' 'Islamic radicalism' or 'totalitarian Islamic empire'" in his speech — in other words, advising Bush not to identify our enemies for the sake of tolerance and diversity.
Fortunately, the President is not an appeaser and called a spade a spade last night:
No one can deny the success of freedom, but some men rage and fight against it. And one of the main sources of reaction and opposition is radical Islam -- the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death.
Pour us another Fris Vodka Martini, and we'll drink to that.
Should Danish Vodka replace the hallowed Beef Eaters Gin in our martinis?
Posted by: goomp | February 02, 2006 at 08:00 AM
We are not all Danes, Spanish, Londoners, or whatever the latest target of Islamic hate is at the moment.
What do we have in common?
We are all INFIDELS.
And we should be PROUD of it.
Posted by: Laurence Simon | February 02, 2006 at 09:54 AM
Uh, no, Goomp. There ARE limits. :)
Laurence: WICKED proud.
Posted by: Sissy Willis | February 02, 2006 at 06:58 PM
I support the buy Danish-campaign!!! Ofcourse it is a bit easier for me to find Danish products to buy - I live in Denmark!
Good to know that so many are in uproar over this whole situation - Freedom of speech is MY religion: so respect it!
A little country rarely gets any international attention. Hmmmm... I guess Denmark is quite famous now: 1/3 of the world still don't care about us, 1/3 hate us and want to suicidebomb us away and the last 1/3 are trying to find out which products are MADE IN DENMARK so that they can anti-boykott us :-)
Posted by: Heidi H | February 03, 2006 at 06:57 PM
Freedom of speech nowhere means allowing blasphemy -- even the Danish law forbids blashemy. You are extremely irresponsible in feeding both the muslim and western extremism by what you publish. Sorry to see that you connect your nonsense with such a fine Finnish word as sisu. I trust you will be punished for your idiotism sooner or later. No I did not like your song either!
Posted by: Siru | February 14, 2006 at 09:35 AM
The "song" referred to by Siru was a gratuitously mindless comment left by Ima Blogger -- blogger_25@hotmail.com -- which I have deleted as junk.
Posted by: Sissy Willis | February 14, 2006 at 09:43 AM