what's fair is fair

This just in:

(CNN) -- An Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, The Associated Press reports.

This will be a learning experience for those Muslims who have been so offended by cartoons depicting Mohammed. I predict that some Jews, and a few non-Jews who do not like to see history rewritten, will complain about the cartoons. I also predict there will be no riots, no burning of embassies, no cancellation of trade agreements, no demands that cartoonists be beheaded, and no other violent reactions.

The West is already accustomed to seeing Jesus and Moses being depicted by Rennaissance masters and by cartoonists with the mind-set of early teenagers. We have heard the "Holocaust never happened" nonsense. We have seen vile, anti-Semitic cartoons of Jews. We have accepted nasty cartoons about politicians as part of the price of being a politician. We in the West have learned to do something a huge number of Muslims have not yet learned to do, which is to shrug it all off as being essentially unimportant. Pictures of naked women bother some Westerners more than all of the foregoing, yet nobody has been beheaded thus far for publishing them (not counting Larry Flynt, who was shot because his magazine depicted interracial couples - the only victim of the First Amendment I can think of off-hand).

So, bring on those Holocaust cartoons. I'd like to see if Iranian cartoonists have a sense of humor. I predict they do not, but if they surprise me, I'll either chuckle or grimace and move on to something important.