For years, cartoonist Pat Oliphant has been taking irresponsible shots at Catholicism. Yet when it came to the controversial Danish cartoons that so inflamed the Muslim world, Oliphant wrote in a recent column, “I have to say that the point of these Danish cartoons eludes me, except as a needless and useless provocation.” Which means he apparently thinks his cartoons deriding Catholicism have some salient point to make. In other words, his cartoons constitute “useful provocation.”
It gets better. In his column, which appeared in the February 19 Chicago Tribune, Oliphant wrote that he is able to accomplish his aims “without resorting to gratuitous ridicule of their religion or the icons attached to it.” Really? Then how does he explain the cartoon below? To top it off, why did the same Chicago Tribune that refused to print the Danish cartoons see fit to reproduce this cartoon on the same page as Oliphant’s article? Are they so blinded by ideology that they can’t see straight? In any event, they all look like hypocrites.
