Your Turn: The Danes Have Mohammed, And The Liberals Have … Kanye?

Would the editors of the Rolling Stone put a crown of thorns on a white man for its cover? Or a woman? This cover really is really about race and the marginalization of black men in American society. I notice there’s a story about the religious right featured to the left of the photo. The Kayne West photo shows that the Left can politicize religion, too. I don’t think the right-wing media will complain too much about this cover. They can be surprisingly timid when their opponents show some muscle. Besides, they don’t want to call attention to that article about the “God’s Senator.” Rolling Stone painted the evangelicals into a corner by featuring that article opposite West’s image as Christ.
Supposedly, in the inside of the magazine, West also dresses as Muhammed Ali. West’s visual parodies remind me of Cindy Sherman’s work. It’s a powerful and visually sophisticated cover.

The covers strikes me as corporate nonsense, designed to sell more CDs, and whatever ‘gear’ Kaye is selling these days. Its just more publicity.

It strikes me that the proper comparison for the muslim rioting is the killings at abortion clinics (where christian fundies have targeted the doctors, etc). I’m still at a loss for drawing comparisons, and as much as I try to understand that most of this is really political (anti-immigration on Europe’s part, anti-Western on the muslim’s part), I find myself still deeply appalled at the level of violence. Boycotts I could understand. Peaceful protesting I could understand. But when waving signs around saying Europe’s got its 9/11 coming, torching embassies, etc, all understanding and tolerance fades away.

Honestly, I think there can be no comparison between the Kanye cover and the Danish cartoon. If Rolling Stone had not explicitly called the cover photo “The Passion of Kanye West” would people be jumping to these conclusions so quickly? The crown of thorns is almost completely obscured by the Rolling Stone Logo.
Also, this photo, unlike the Danish cartoon, focuses on one man. The cartoon lampoons all of Islam. This photo does not.
After all, if you really think about it, Jesus probably looked more like Kanye West than Charlton Heston.

News Flash! -
Crazy religious fundamentalists attack free speech

The Rolling Stones were censored during their half-time performance at the Super Bowl XL in Detroit on Sunday.
TV censors deemed two lyrics too sexually explicit to be broadcast and they were cut from the three-song show.
The incident, which was broadcast to millions of TV viewers worldwide, led to the CBS TV network being fined a record $550,000.

Michelle Malkin was not available for comment.

I have no desire to defend piss Christ or the stones cover. Except to say that we too, like the Danes, are free to say and do what we will. That’s not the issue here at all. Free speech comes with being held accountable for what you say. It implies a certain amount of responsibility.
The backlash from any of these things is predictable. It should be anticipated. It’s wrong to ridicule Christians for feeling offended by piss Christ— I do think some members of the left miss this little scrap of elitism.
Sometimes it seems that the most avid proponents of free speech want to censor out any kind of critical speech. Or mistake harsh criticism for a call for censorship. Or they mistake a call for self-censorship for a call for mandated censorship. When an artwork or ad causes wide spread angry reactions we need to address the reason.
Is it reasonable? The editor of the Danish paper seems to think it’s absurd—and that’s what’s really insulting.

“The Passion of Kayne West” = Pop Culture.
Christ (to an extent), like Muhammed Ali is a pop culture icon in America. If it hadn’t been for the line The passion of Kayne … which harkens to the film, the context of the whole image would change.
Kayne seems to impose himself into the roles of Muhammed Ali or Jesus as to say he is among their pantheon of figures.
There is no barring of Christ in artistic means unlike the restriction of protraying the prophet. In a way this image and the allowance of it to be published is a method of seperating free speech and religous reverance.
The image itself could be read as sacreligous because someone has the audacity to compare themselves as equal to Christ. Then again one of the core goals of Christianity to be as Christlike as possible.
So then perhaps a conclusion could be drawn that Christianity is oxymoronic. (Preach love but kill in Christ’s name). Whereas the muhammed cartoon casts the prophet’s entire message as : Kill the Infidel.
Or it could merely be a shock factor to piss off the Religous Right.

First thought: “Passion of the Christ” spoof. Second thought: “Passion of the Christ” spoof with West’s in-your-face attitude; and he’s much more handsome than Mel’s Christ. I don’t see this as any response to the Danish cartoon reaction. Pretty sure it was planned/shot/laid out long before the riots. IMHO, he’s there to sell his product; Rolling Stone has him there to sell their product.

Who is Kanye West?

Who is Kanye West?
Some kind of rock star. I think he was the guy who said that bush didn’t care about black people.

SusanMurray, google hits = 5,950,000 entries in 0.13 seconds for Kayne West.
Wikipedia will deliver a relatively quick and comprehensive biography of him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West

et tu Iran, et tu?
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18066746-1702,00.html?from=rss

Like I said, some kind of rock star.

GHOSTMACHINE, thanks for the link reminded me of,
“Wise men often agree and Fools seldom differ” -anonymous

Kanye West is a rapper/R&B musician who made headlines by claming “George Bush hates Black people” during a Katrina benefit.

“More popular then Jesus”.
I see it as a spoof of the movie, but I wonder what would happen if they said “Kyane West is the son of god”. I’m pretty sure they also would get a lot of complaints. However US standings means they can’t then tell the people complaining to feck off and get other papers to print the same picture as a form of “free speech”.

Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons
Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today.
The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny …
Full text at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1703552,00.html

Forget about the cartoons, it’s not even about them…
I like this image of Kayne West. In America life is sanitized. The sick and old are shuffled away. We drive everywhere and avoid the poor neighborhoods so we never have to deal with people outside of our socio-economic status. We live in air conditioned house and drink bottled water.
When Katrina hit then MTV wanted to put on a show to “take people’s minds off” of the tragedy. What West said was from the heart and it put peoples minds on something real. Sometimes that’s healthy.

Thanks, Ali. The operative word here is “hypocrisy”.

error27, I agree in some ways but I think his head is to big.
If I could forget who he was this is a better image of Christ than most. It’s a sort of “fight club-anti-establishment” Christ. My inner teenager thinks it’s pretty cool.
The only think insulting or wrong about this image is the fact that it’s on the cover of RS and the guy pretending to be Christ is some kind of pop star.

But I thought Christ *was* some kind of pop star.

I couldn’t respond to this image until I saw the photo credit. Now that I know it’s by David LaChapelle, I see it as serious rather than sensational. For LaChapelle, this is a very intimate, *reverential,* and straightforward photo. To understand what I mean by that, here are some representative examples of LaChapelle’s work:
http://www.artnet.com/artist/9965/david-lachapelle.html
LaChapelle’s claim-to-fame early work always made me uncomfortable (as it is supposed to). Then I saw his documentary film “Rize” last year, about the kids in South Central L.A. who have invented a dance called “krumping” and I was blown away. I now think LaChapelle feels much empathy toward blacks — as outsiders, as marginalized in American society — and this empathy is revealed in his work. Since he himself was ridiculed and tormented by his white classmates for being gay (even though he too is white), I think his empathy is genuine.
If I’m remembering correctly, Jesus was a ridiculed outsider, too, during his lifetime.
Here’s a nice interview from The Advocate if you want to know more about LaChapelle the person:
http://www.davidlachapelle.com/press/advocate_03.shtml

First Attention:Cartoon confrontation in Iran.
Second Reply To:”Then I saw his documentary film “Rize” last year, about the kids in South Central L.A. who have invented a dance called “krumping” and I was blown away. I now think LaChapelle feels much empathy toward blacks — as outsiders”( Posted by: readytoblowagasket | Feb 07, 2006 at 06:11 AM ).
David LaChapelle the Photographer took a punk snap of Claudia Schiffer. She was once one of my too many girl-friends. Logged in
here under the header cartoon confrontation West-Esst:
Needless to remember she, Claudia Schiffer, deadly denigrated on a tv evening news Iranian Imam Komeini posthum &
Iran when she was 1990 wearing a Coco Chanel
“haute couture” “deux-pieces” cloathing
with Arabian & Farsi
S._Rushdie scriptings
taken out of the “Satanic Verses”( Claudia Schiffer’s robe
was designed by the
contemporary Chanel-tailor Karl Lagerfeld ). To the
same denigration theme
with an actual variation:Those of us who Germany has taken away passports to attend a Teheran research session of the law edicted by Reinhard Heidrich at the Wannsee conference know
of what they speak if they never use or mention Hebrew forged terms(two examples:[ 1.] the the Walther & Herbert Bush clan attending a church or chappel always at the eve of a decapitation strike or else a bridge bombardement in Baghdad; [2.]Catholic Cross in the air Imitations: a smile to all those of us who don’t hail the Hebrew language of a Pope & Priest decoy as the shadow CINC Kerry did on all tv screens during the burrial(“pompes funebres”) of Roni Reagan in Washington and Arlington.
I welcome instead the “international festival of cartoons” of “Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor of Hamshahiri”(compare please: Anthony Browne, The Times, February 07 2006 ,”Cartoons”"World leaders rally round as crisis deepens”) which will in a nice try _d_r_a_w_ us the proof that the Western World [_ _--- actually ---_ _] _i_s__or__i_s__n_o_t_ so free as they pretend. Till today the Western world reacted with interdictions to the Reasons and Causes about the Wannsee Conference Decisions even when it is in form of a funny _Not-Hebrew_ cartoons festival in Teheran(Iran).

Sorry, but I don’t know anything about Kanye West. I was trying to explain to my sons, though, that in the West, many people don’t see anything wrong with making images of God and the Prophets, and that was very strange for them. I told them that God is often painted as an old man with a white beard, but they’ve never seen those images. So when I had this post up on the screen, I told them that the guy was supposed to be Jesus (the prophet Iesa, pbuh, who they know from the Quran), and they were just kind of puzzled by the whole idea. But we did agree that he looks more like Jesus probably looked than the blonde, blue-eyed pictures I told them about.
BEG, this weekend, British Muslims will have a march (hopefully well-attended) to protest the cartoons but also to condemn the extremists that demonstrated recently. As it turns out, the guy who dressed as a suicide bomber was a convicted drug dealer who was out on probation or something, and he’s now being returned to prison. His actions have been widely condemned.
Susan, the issue of “self-censorship” has come up a lot in this, and don’t we all “self-censor” all the time? Do any of us blurt out anything and everything that comes into our heads? (Sort of like Jim Carrey in “Liar, Liar”, I think it was called?) There are only so many pages in every newspaper, so the editor alwas makes choices about what to include.

Susan, the issue of “self-censorship” has come up a lot in this, and don’t we all “self-censor” all the time?
Yes. But, I guess some people just don’t have enough respect for others to realise that an action that may not offend me might offend someone else.
I mean, unless you have some real point to make by being offensive. Like offending Bush supporters by telling the truth. Or Cindy Sheehan who offended a lot of people by just sitting and waiting for an answer. Or (to be fair to the right) peaceful pickets of abortion clinics with those dead baby posters– I mean, that offends me! But, even that is not the same as these cartoons. I can understand why pro-lifers have these protests. They are passionate. They have a point they want to make. They think this stuff will work.
But,I can’t even understand the actions of these newspapers. What is the point being made? “We, the majority can say whatever we like about the minority! Ha ha!”
My 7th graders are more mature.

LaChapelle has a thing for Jesus:
Jesus is My Home Boy: Foot Wash
Jesus is My Home Boy: Bridge
Last Supper

I’m not a fan of Mr West. To me he seems to be an arrogant, big-headed jerk. He’s a middle class kid (according to a VH1 special, mom’s a prof of English, dad’s a photographer and former Black Panther) with a martyr complex; that’s what I get from this pic of him as Jesus. Aside from the Katrina comment, he also got some attention at some award show last year; they were awarding Best New Artist, and West was up out of his seat, heading towards stage and waving his hands in victory before they said the name; Gretchen Wilson, a country singer, won (oops). He cares about race issues, and that’s good, but he’s still a jerk.