Outrage

Cartoon lunacy has returned once again with the usual menu of outrage, effigy-burning, hurt feelings and apologies. As artists and literalists duke it out in the United States and in Europe, it no longer seems implausible that the world will go up in a mushroom cloud because some fevered fanatic couldn't take a joke. Or even get it. In Europe, it's the Swedes this time who have offended Muslims with cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, including one that shows the prophet's head on the body of a dog. Outrage was swift.

WASHINGTON -- Newsweek reports that "Romance," a new movie from France, "pushes the envelope on sex." A recent New York Times headline announced, "Pushing the Bleeping Envelope: Fox Flirts With Serious Outrage."The phrase "pushing the envelope," which comes from aviation, refers to pushing an aircraft beyond the "envelope" of design limits. Nowadays the phrase is shorthand for pushing against public standards of taste, if any remain.Newsweek says the movie's envelope-pushing involves treating sex "explicitly."

Cheer up. Can't be more than eight more weeks of these temperatures, tops.Polls show conclusively that no one who filed in either party can be elected mayor of Baltimore this year.Benjamin Nathaniel Smith had all the advantages except humanity.Hillary Clinton is no New Yorker. Nor are all those folks bubbling over in outrage at her carpet-bagging.Pub Date: 7/07/99

Clinton R. Coleman peeks into the room of City Hall reporters gathering for Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's weekly news conference when a broad smile sweeps across his face."

RECENTLY, I turned over this soapbox of mine to a group of teen-agers who found a great deal in my work to criticize.Generally, they were offended by the frustrations I expressed as the parent of teen-agers and angered by what they considered to be ageist generalizations made by me.Their letters, reprinted in part here, said firmly that many, if not most, teens were courteous to their parents, diligent in their education, did not drink, smoke, experiment with...

WHERE IS good old-fashioned conservative outrage when and where you would most expect to find it? It was abundant in the cases of David Koresh and his followers in Waco, Texas, four years ago and in the 1992 shootout in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.In early December, a story hit the news wires that the U.S. Army, after 30 years, has finally admitted spying on civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. during his last days in Memphis, Tenn. Either conservatives didn't get outraged or they didn't see the story.

WILLIAM J. Bennett, America's self-styled voice of virtue, recently included me among those he believes are responsible for the "death of outrage" within the American public. Actually, over the years I have more frequently been criticized for displaying too much outrage over such deep-seated public wrongs as the war in Vietnam and the public immorality represented by allowing a fifth of America's children to be living in poverty.Moral outrageBut these and other political and social injustices do not seem to stir Mr. Bennett's sense of outrage as deeply as the personal sins of others.

RECENT news reports have been filled with accounts of the abuse and murder of 9-year-old Rita Fisher of Pikesville. Rita's unsmiling, swollen face stared out at us from newspapers and television screens, evoking horror and outrage that a child in our midst could be so maltreated. How could it happen was the echoing question. Give them the death penalty, was what people said after Rita's mother, sister and sister's boyfriend were convicted of Rita's murder.I have other questions, equally disturbing and difficult.

150 years ago in The SunMay 4: A Big Snake -- Two gentleman, gunning on Saturday in the vicinity of Kell's Woods, shot a black snake near 6 feet and a half long.May 7: Another Outrage -- The captain of a canal boat was assaulted a night or two since by a parcel of rowdies at Pratt Street bridge, and shamefully beaten.100 years ago in The SunMay 4: Mr. Henry E. Black, against whom the State's attorney had filed an information for refusing to pay the toll on Charles Street Extended, came into court at Towson yesterday in obedience to the bench warrant.

A gunfight at a West Baltimore barbershop that left a 3-year-old boy fatally wounded before he could get his birthday haircut prompted an outcry against city crime yesterday, as Baltimoreans faced the grim likelihood that 1997 will be another murderous year.Police arrested two men in the shooting of James Smith III, who died at 10: 30 a.m. yesterday at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center. His death came shortly after a visit from Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who called the shooting "an act of violence that touches the nerves of people throughout the city."

Do you think maybe we could move on from the Jon Cardin marriage proposal "scandal" now? (I mean, as soon as this column ends?) Please, let's find something else to be outraged about - lies about the proposed health care overhaul, speed cameras, the cost of cable service, unnecessary prostate surgery. By now, the state delegate from Baltimore County has apologized to the entire Patapsco Drainage Basin for getting city cops to stage a fake raid of a boat on the night he popped the question to his fiancee.

The cops in Baltimore's Southwestern Police District knocked on 28 doors, searching for 28 juveniles they had locked up in the past month. They were serving not warrants to put them back in jail but invitations to a meeting, to teach, to guide, to inform, to keep them from being locked up a second time. Deputy Maj. Charles V. Carter Sr. led off the meeting, held Friday night at the Kedesh House of Prayer Christian Church on West Lombard Street, with a prayer and a reading of grim statistics of juvenile crime - 260 kids under 18 arrested this year in his district alone, 16 of them deemed violent, 27 of them repeat offenders.

I hope he fails. -Rush Limbaugh It is, of course, a calculated outrage. Meaning, it was spewed by a clown in the media circus to kick a familiar sequence into motion: angry denunciation by bloggers, pundits and supporters of President Barack Obama (the "he" whose failure is hoped), followed by Rush Limbaugh refusing to retract a word, a courageous truth teller who will not be moved. And, trailing behind, like the folks with brooms trail the elephants in the circus parade, Mr. Limbaugh's devotees, complaining that their hero has been misquoted, misunderstood or otherwise mistreated.

WASHINGTON - "Damn you and the likes of you to the bowels of hell, you ignorant racist bastard!" So wrote an outraged Muslim to political cartoonist Doug Marlette a few years ago after he drew a cartoon featuring the prophet Muhammad. Tens of thousands of Muslims bellowed, blogged and clogged until servers collapsed with hate mail and death threats. No cartoon - or cartoonist - would go unpunished. Here we go again. Similar passions are being expressed this week in response to another cartoon, this time on the cover of the liberal-leaning New Yorker magazine.

MSNBC has seen fit to protect the American public from this political shocker: All three presidential candidates agree on something. The network is refusing to air a new TV ad that reminds Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama that they've all spoken in favor of closing a loophole that allows criminals to buy guns at gun shows. Too "controversial," MSNBC told Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group behind the ad. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox are all airing it. The MSNBC decision is of local interest because, as I wrote the other day, Sheila Dixon is one of four mayors featured in the ad. Not to mention because Baltimore police seized almost 4,000 illegal guns last year.

Where is Davon David Temple? We know where he was in January of this year: in Baltimore District Court, where charges that he trespassed on the grounds of the Walbrook Uniform Services Academy were dropped. In December of last year, Temple was also in District Court, where the hearing for those charges was postponed. A Baltimore police officer said that in October of last year Temple and at least one other man walked onto the grounds of the Walbrook Uniform Services Academy spoiling for a fight with members of the Crips gang.

Cartoon lunacy has returned once again with the usual menu of outrage, effigy-burning, hurt feelings and apologies. As artists and literalists duke it out in the United States and in Europe, it no longer seems implausible that the world will go up in a mushroom cloud because some fevered fanatic couldn't take a joke. Or even get it. In Europe, it's the Swedes this time who have offended Muslims with cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, including one that shows the prophet's head on the body of a dog. Outrage was swift.

Radical Islamists love to scream about the "decadent" West. Everything from our operas to our attitudes about women outrage these loud, pious critics. As part of their condemnation, fundamentalist Muslims say they put a higher premium on family values and reverence for the past than crass, modern Americans and Europeans do. But that is hardly true. In Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, unforgiving sharia law administered by stern state clerics dictates cutting off a hand for theft. Is there less stealing, then?

Veteran political columnist David Broder set off a firestorm recently when he called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid an "embarrassment" for declaring the Iraq war "lost." From the assault subsequently directed at Mr. Broder - from other journalists, political operatives, left-wing bloggers and even the entire Senate Democratic Caucus - you'd have thought Mr. Broder had had an intimate encounter with an intern. Or, in the spirit of bipartisanship, had broken into Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Media often fail to display diversity Maybe we should hold those rap artists whose success stems from misogyny as accountable for their language as Don Imus ("Remark renews old hip-hop debate," April 13). But I'm disheartened by the way the discussion over Mr. Imus' remarks has so quickly diverted attention from the accountability of media organizations for such language. Mr. Imus' radio and television employers connected their decision to fire him to some commitment to diversity. Without some broader changes in their programming, however, it's much easier to believe they did it only in response to pressure from advertisers.