Sacred Cows: Rank Hath Its Privileges

 
In his Boston Globe column today, Jeff Jacoby compares the behavior of Muslims over the Great Cartoon Affair with the non-behavior of non-affronted Hindus vis-à-vis cows:

Hindus may consider it odious to use cows as food, but they do not resort to boycotts, threats, and violence when non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone abide by the strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons: They don’t lash out in violence when their religious sensibilities are offended. They certainly don’t expect their beliefs to be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.

But radical Muslims do.

I hate to say it, but he’s a little late on the bandwagon. Regular Gates of Vienna readers will remember that I launched this particular wagon back in December, in a post called “Sacred Animal Farm”. In it I mentioned the Mohammed Cartoons (referencing the The Brussels Journal) long before they were even fashionable. I said:

For a counterpoint to all this, look at Christianity. Forget inadvertent offense: the examples of deliberate, calculated, and extreme attempts to offend Christians are legion within the popular culture. Even so, no Baptists are strapping on bomb belts and blowing themselves up in the Museum of Modern Art.

Not long ago, on my way towards the meat counter in a grocery store I passed a Hindu couple pushing their shopping cart up along the aisle. When I got to the beef section I noticed a little display sign showing a smiling cartoon cow holding up a steak on a platter and licking her chops in autophagous anticipation.

Surely, I thought, the Hindu couple must have found this display repugnant. The rows of raw red beef in packages might well have deeply disturbed their religious sensibilities. Yet there they were, calmly shopping!

No one was picketing the store. I didn’t have to pass through a metal detector to get in. Nobody firebombed the place the next day. No Hindu suicide bomber blew up the regional Food Lion headquarters.

So you heard it here first! But who gets the lead on Memeorandum? And just because he’s a big-shot MSM columnist! Rant! Rave! Seethe…

That crackling sound you hear is the slowly cooling embers of the late Baron Bodissey, recently consumed by envy.