Pork, peace, and their discontents

I love that "...and their discontents" trope.  I should use it more often.

Via the Adorable Girlfriend at the Republic of Dogs, we come across this bit of cobaggery*, Peace Through Pork.  It's a cafepress store selling T-shirts that purport to bring about peace by confronting superstition.   The T-shirts have the slogan presumably translated to Arabic and Hebrew, a clear reference to the Middle East conflict.  Obviously, they mean to imply that the Mideast conflict emerges from religious differences among the inhabitants of the area, and by confronting a major cultural and religious taboo, they can efface those difference.

This absurdity would make more sense if it weren't for the following.  If there is any local historical cause for the problems in the Middle East, it certainly wasn't the religious, but rather secular nationalists, some of whom were willing to eat pork.  And then the conflict was fed and nutured by nations with allegedly Christian histories, most of whom did and do engage in wide-spread pork consumption. 

I know that Peace Through Pork is a joke, but it's still only funny if you suffer from the lazier forms of liberalism.  Or are a pork eater of Jewish or whatever-ethnicity-is-usually-Muslim extraction, but that's another story.

Oh, and, confidential to AG: I forgive you!  Honest!  That last "another story" applies to you because of UC.

*"cobag" is short for colostomy bag and a rather evocative epithet invented and used by a small group of US humour blogs, including the Republic of Dogs, in order to reduce the frequency of more common racist and sexist epithets in humour, I think.  Way to spoil a joke, eh?  But my Canadian readers would be confused or, for that matter, most US bloggers.

Comments

[skdadl]

Mandos, I hate to do this, but ...

I know that cobaggery is supposed to be a joke, but it's only funny if ... And I know that you can fill in the rest of that sentence, yes?

Otherwise, I agree with you about the limp humour of Peace through Pork.

[Mandos]

Yeah, I thought of that. There's a problem given that people who have to have one may not find it that funny. But I think it's less bad than other insults based on other characteristics that people can't change, because no one actually wants to have one, except as a survival necessity, they are universally considered to be unpleasant. (Whereas some people might be women, or have high melanin content, or deaf, or whatever.)

Or maybe I'm just rationalizing over a blind spot. I mean, I wouldn't joke about a wheelchair. But a wheelchair doesn't contain human excrement normally.

Coming up with funny insults is hard, and I just witnessed a medium-sized paroxysm in the US liberal blogosphere over this issue---about fat, in that case.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

I know that Peace Through Pork is a joke, but it's still only funny if you suffer from the lazier forms of liberalism. Or are a pork eater of Jewish or whatever-ethnicity-is-usually-Muslim extraction, but that's another story.

Actually, you know very little about why this was connected to Pinko and UC.

[Mandos]

I'm sure that there's a backstory. But I am examining the object itself.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

Actually, not really. Your understanding of modern Jewish life and the diaspora is somewhat lacking.

[Mandos]

I'm sure, but it doesn't just touch on Jews. There's Arabic on that T-Shirt, last I checked. If it were just Hebrew, I'd have probably not given it a second glace. But "peace" is such a loaded term when you put Arabic and Hebrew on a T-shirt.

One thing I *do* know about North American modern Jewish culture is its occasional tendency to forget that there's another party in the room. Guess what: I'm in that party.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

Correct, there is another party. Nobody is denying that, nor I am ignoring that. However, that does not change your lack of understanding of Jewish life knowledge.

[Mandos]

All right, there are lots of things in this universe that I actually don't know (gasp!). If you don't mind, explain to me why that should be relevant to analyzing this case? I am analyzing the portion of it that's relevant to me. I'm sure that there's a portion of it that's relevant to NA Jewish life, but that's not the part I'm dealing with.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

Did you moderate my comments? I posted a rather lenghty comment, which I did not save to my computer.

I hope it was not lost!

[Mandos]

I do not moderate comments here, except for obvious spam. You may be suffering from the Six Apart gremlins. Heaven knows what I have lost on their account! Can you post a summary?

[Adorable Girlfriend]

Summary? Good grief. I will post on my blog about my thoughts. It will be a few weeks. I owe Plover a similar post.