Adonis Diaries

Are We Exercising Good Judgments? (March 23, 2005)

A woman friend of mine e-mailed a joke undersigned by a certain Diana.

My friend is bright and could be considered an expert in graphic design.

She is proud of being a good character assessor.

Unfortunately, she never directed her attention to politics, reading newspapers or listening to news.

The joke in a nut shell goes as follow:  A Syrian teacher asks her student children: ” who is Syrian in my class?”.

All except one girl raise their hands. To the teacher query the child answers that she is a proud Lebanese.

The teacher asks her who she might be if her mother is an idiot and her father is an idiot.

The child replies: “Then possibly I could have been a Syrian”.

I sent my response promptly to my friend saying:

“I vigorously deleted your stupid joke disseminated from the idiot of a Diana”.

When later I confronted her she said: “But Diana is not the one who wrote the joke”.

I said: “I think you missed the point.  Whoever is participating in disseminating chauvinistic politics is an idiot”.

If the so called joker was a wee bit funny and intelligent he might have jumped on the important Kadhafi’s speech in the Arab summit in Algeria yesterday.  A large chunk of this speech was rambling to my opinion but very enlightening.

Kadhafi, the leader, or President or Zaim of Libya, said that the Israelis are idiots and the Palestinians are also idiots; he expounded on his rational and generated hilarious laughter from the leaders of the countries attending the summit. Kadhafi said if the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were so important to Israel then why didn’t Israel grab them when they declared their one-sided independence in 1948?  If the Palestinian wanted so badly the West Bank and Gaza then why didn’t they hold on to these lands after the independence of Israel?

Suppose the joke was formulated such as the teacher asked the child: “If you were the kid of a Palestinian idiot mother and of an Israeli idiot Father, what you think might be your nationality?”

Now, if the child replied: “Most probably, I would be called Syrian” then the joke might have made me laugh enormously. The joke might sound triply chauvinistic but at least it might highlight the miserable political dilemma the Near East States are confronted with.

I would not rule out the assumption that most of the world considers the Near East people as idiots which does not confirm that the others are not idiots as well.

Chauvinistic and sectarian jokes that are disseminated nowadays are debasing to the disseminators first and demeaning to the unsolicited receivers. These kinds of jokes cannot be categorized under the free expression umbrella because the receivers did not demand to be shared with these sickening minds and petty emotions.

My position is that if the so called enlightened persons do not exercise good judgments in this dangerous political period and allow these kinds of chauvinism and sectarianism to pass under the excuses of jokes, then how are we supposed to create a modern society and participate in a just and fair system for all the citizens?

Many citizens who are not politically oriented are succumbing to the influences of petty chauvinistic environments at work, at home, and in nationalistic gatherings and demonstrations.  This emotional climate is not generating a cultural revival.