Cartoon and Perspective

Recently there has been a world-wide uproar over the publication of 12 Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September. After an extensive search I did manage to actually find the cartoons on the internet, although almost none of the newspaper articles actually show the cartoon they are talking out. Clearly these cartoons are racist, insensitive, unreasonable, inaccurate, and have no positive value in society. However, are they worth the world-wide outbursts? And it’s not like this is the only religious set of cartoons; after only a minute of searching I found cartoons that included a Jew destroying the Statue of Liberty, a Jesus with a rifle, a deformed Gandhi, and I’m sure there are many more pictures that insult other people. Now I’m not saying these pictures are good, I don’t even believe that they would be protected by free speech, but I do believe there are more important things to worry about. For example, Every year 15 million children die of hunger, over 40,000,000 people world-wide have HIV/AIDS, there are currently over 20 major international or civil wars, global warming is getting worse, the world’s only superpower spends a warped amount of money on farm subsidies and weapons, Russia has become a de facto Totalitarian country, and North Korea has the 4th biggest army in the world, nuclear weapons, and a nutcase dictator (and since the US refused to punish North Korea out of fear of a nuclear war, other countries, like Iran, are rushing to build them). So yes, I agree, the cartoons are bad, but let us have a little perspective on what bad really means. However, maybe this will show that when large groups of people are pissed about something they can get some attention, but maybe next time they will be rioting about something more critical to themselves and humanity.