Iranian paper seeks Holocaust cartoons: “A prominent Iranian newspaper said Tuesday it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.”

Good for them. Someone should be searching out the most offensive hilarious cartoons about Jesus as a drug addicted Klan member, a retarded steak-loving Buddha, and Kung Fu Tse as a gay wife-beater in blackface.

Seriously. I’ve been reading blogs all week challenging everyone to post these cartoons everywhere. And I’m all for the freedom of speech. So let’s take this all the way, and make it equal opportunity HaHa. Let’s put The Aristocrats to shame with decadence and unabashedly mean jokes at the expense of someone’s heartfelt beliefs.

Look, words and cartoons and movies and music lyrics only have as much power as you are willing to give them. If you let people know that you’re offended by a cartoon that makes fun of your god, or derogatory terms for your race or gender or sexual orientation — well, you’re only feeding that beast. If you ignore the offending material — and after all, it’s just that and nothing that can really hurt you, by the way, and I’m pretty sure that gods are capable of taking care of themselves — then you starve the beast that taunts you, and eventually it shrivels up and dies.

But on the other side of the net, while I’m all for everyone’s right to say whatever they want, funny or not, there’s a line at some point, and it’s not easy to see. That line is drawn from intent, and this is where it gets sticky — how can we really know what someone’s intent is? We can’t, always — but in this instance, it’s clear to me that people know this is pushing buttons with many Islamic believers, and so they’re pushing harder. “What, this bothers you? So I guess when we put it everywhere, it bothers you more? Like this? Really?”

I remember seeing someone on BULLSHIT! saying that people have the right to say whatever they want; people don’t have the right (no matter how much this may crush you, it’s really not in any constitution, amendment, or law book that I know of) to not be offended. I can tell jokes about pedophiles or the Special Olympics all day long, with a picture of Hitler on my t-shirt and a tattoo of Jesus getting a blowjob from Moses if I want; if you don’t want to hear the jokes or see the shirt or tattoo, no one is forcing you to look or listen.

Repeat, for emphasis: NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO LOOK OR LISTEN. STOP ACTING LIKE IT’S NOT YOUR CHOICE TO BE THERE.

But if I start telling those jokes with the express intent of pissing someone off, or hurting someone’s feelings, or putting it in your face … well, then I’ve crossed a line.

Does any of this make sense? Yeah, I know its a huge gray area, and that there are slippery slopes involved. That’s life — very few binary arguments to be found in the real world. Sorry, Christian Right.

But to those that are pushing to rub this cartoon in the face of Islam — you’d best be willing to laugh when it’s your god that’s the source of the HaHa. And you’d also best be ready for whatever comes out of your egging the situation on — you know what happens when you fuck with even the friendliest animal enough?

Eventually that animal is gonna fuck back. And you better hope it’s not one of the ones with a barbed penis.