There's a blog devoted to fans of a certain high-end pocket notebook, the Moleskine brand. The proprietor of the blog likes to post pictures of people holding the Moleskine notebook -- or what might be one -- and recently ran a cheesecake illustration of a 30s-era telephone operator with her bloomers revealed, holding a notebook in one hand. One reader objected in the comments to this fleshy fantasy, others piled on calling her a censor, and the resulting pileup shows a lot about American tolerance and moral thinking in the year 2006.
Americans -- I'm at least as guilty of this as anyone else -- generally display an attitude of superiority when it comes to thinking about how enlightened and tolerant we are about political and other forms of diversity. Compared to the Arab world or most third-world countries, we're a model of democratic pluralism, aren't we? All those brown people shooting and bombing each other over little things like how to pray, or whether women should be slaves or merely chattel -- we'd never go off the deep end like that, eh? Oh sure -- until someone steps on our toes. Then it's no-holds-barred flame war.
Well, democracy is messy, even when the subject is something as trivial as notebooks and pin-up girls. And I'd rather the debate be seen and heard than have no debate at all, or have the debate be covered up. But at the same time there's something to be said for being mature enough not to bait people and not to respond to baiting, because after a certain point, it's all just yelling and screaming and a waste of energy.
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