Hattip Best of the Web
James Taranto writes: London's Guardian has a follow-up report on the conflagration that began with a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. It sounds as though efforts to boycott Denmark were not terribly effective:
While Danish milk products were dumped in the Middle East, fervent rightwing Americans started buying Bang & Olufsen stereos and Lego. In the first quarter of this year Denmark's exports to the US soared 17%. The British writer Christopher Hitchens organised a buy-Danish campaign. Among the thousands of emails sent to Rose [the newspaper editor who published the Mohammed cartoons] was one from an American soldier serving in Iraq. "He told me he was sitting in Iraq, watching a game of football and drinking a can of Carlsberg," Rose said.
The article goes on to talk about the fall-out from the Cartoonifada: European politics turning rightward as the peepul realize there are real risks from allowing masses of unassimilated Muslims to colonize, the colonists feeling a bit less comfortable about future trends... all the while the journalist striving mightily to make these same Muslim colonists appear colourful, quaint and as charmingly harmless as a Gypsy caravan. |