Would you believe me if I told you a Vermont publication had republished the cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a fuse coming from his headgear—the same one that sparked violence around the world—and no one noticed or cared?
It really happened. Before “Comic News” went out of business for lack of advertising, they ran the cartoon on the cover. The next issue, to make clear they were equal opportunity offenders with no particular grudge against Islam, the cover featured all sorts of major figures with fuses coming from their heads: the Pope of course, George W. Bush, Mickey Mouse if my memory serves me well. Again, there was no stir, let alone a furor.
This says something about Addison County, I think. Its fusion of hardscrabble agricultural realism and back-to-the-land and New Age idealism, seasoned by all sorts of influences from the Middlebury College community and a lively small business sector, has inoculated the region against many kinds of superficiality. An amazing number of private schools have taken root, expressions of creative independence at the least. A remarkable number of worthy publications add their voices; though Comic News didn’t make it, the Middlebury Natural Foods Cooperative newsletter routinely offers some of the soundest advice and background education on nutritional matters, the high school’s Tiger’s Print has won awards…and on and on.
At the end of the fuse was a fizzle. There’s a message in that for all those who see anger as a righteous way to advance their causes.
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