The Strange Case of Gillian Gibbons

How Theodore R. Bear lost his presidential affiliation

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
12/1/07
 

By now the world knows about the strange case of Gillian Gibbons. Ms. Gibbons, 54, looks like everyone’s favorite grandmother, and hails from Liverpool, which is a great place to be from.

She taught in the Sudan, an elementary school teacher, and got in hot water when her six and seven year old charges elected to name the class mascot, a medium-sized white teddy bear, “Mohammad.” This happens to be the most common name for male children in the Sudan, just as “Jesus” is popular in Latin American countries, or “Abraham” is in Europe and northern Africa.

The school secretary, unfortunately, was a religious nut of the Moslem variety, and decided that this was an affront to the prophet. Bears are probably deemed unclean animals (and if you’ve ever watched bears, you know that personal hygiene doesn’t rank real high among them), but I’m pretty sure that teddy bears aren’t on the list. Even if they are named for a US president who was a liberal Republican.

The secretary spread the word, and quickly a mob formed, demanding death for the teacher.

Fortunately, this was in the Sudan, a country that has no serious social or financial problems. Indeed, it is a glittering example of the moral superiority of Islam. When life is that perfect, it makes sense that you won’t be able to come up with better ways to occupy your time other than to demand the decapitation of a Liverpudlian grandmother for standing nearby when a teddy bear was named “Mohammad.”

Now, the fact of the matter is that not everyone in the Sudan is a glittering example. Thus it was that wiser heads with less glitter determined that the teacher should receive 15 days in jail and be deported, which in that part of the world is considered a slap on the wrist. (In Saudi Arabia, such slaps are usually administered with an axe). Even in the Sudan, most people thought the whole incident was ludicrous. The rest of the world settled for concluding that the Sudanese had gone mad. Fifteen days in jail and deportation. The teddy bear, Mohammad, had no comment.

Quickly a mob formed, demanding death for the teacher. The whole crowd glittered.

Chances are the authorities will be able to get Gillian Gibbons out of the Sudan and safely back in Liverpuddles before a howling mob decapitates her in order to spare the non-teddy-bear Mohammad’s feelings.

If they don’t, and Gillian Gibbons dies by decapitation, I suspect that over the next few years, you will see a lot of Englishmen naming their new puppies “Mohammad.” There is a chance – ok, a faint chance – that I might cluck in disapproval at such a blatant display of religious insensitivity, but if I did, it would be done with the same conviction and depth of conscience of Newt Gingrich clucking over Bill Clinton’s sexual gymnastics. Newt has his moments of glitter, although in fairness, he never called for Bill Clinton’s decapitation.

This is a bit of a warning for the religious nuts of the middle east here. We know what gets your goat.

Look to America, a land where glittering examples are quite capable of claiming that teletubbies, who look only vaguely like teddy bears and hail from near Liverpool, are promoting the gay agenda. This, apparently, is deeply offensive to a variety of otherwise uninvolved cosmic sky muffins who might respond by appearing on the Bill O’Reilly Show to complain that Santa Claus is actually Satan Claus.

Back in the sixties, Europeans, probably French although it would be wrong to point a finger, learned that Americans responded to having their flag burned in much the same way that the fruitloops in the Sudan responded to a teddy bear named Mohammad. They would go nuts.

This doesn’t generally work in Liverpool. If you walk up to a Liverpudlian and tell him that a bunch of glittering examples just burned a Union Jack in the Sudan, he might look at you and say, “They burned the flag? Why? Were they cold?” It just isn’t the sort of glittering response the flag-burner might be hoping for.

Now, the Europeans were annoyed at the Americans over Vietnam and a variety of other issues, not the least of which was the new historical revisionism in America that America “saved Europe” in World War II. AFTER World War II, certainly, but not during. It was irritating. And they weren’t averse to doing a little irritating back in return.

So it was that whenever three Frenchmen gathered for coffee and croissants, they would bring along an American flag and burn it, just to watch the Americans scream and jump up and down and gibber. It was enormously entertaining.

Americans responded by trying to make flag burning illegal, apparently not noticing that hardly anybody was burning flags inside America, and the folks in Paris, Liverpool or the Sudan weren’t going to give a toss what American law said about that particular issue.

So instead of dissuading protesters around the world from burning flags, it caused the practice to spread.

Now they burn American flags whether Americans have any role in a protest or not. I bet before the Gillian Gibbons case is resolved, you’ll see glittering examples in the Sudan burn at least one American flag, just for formality’s sake.

But here’s the thing. Just as the French discovered what annoys Americans, westerners now know how to drive glittering examples in the Islamic world completely bonkers, and a screaming, out-of-control adversary with a completely blown temper is far easier to beat than a calm, collected, rational opponent.

And the English, known as a perfidious sort, excel at that sort of thing. They know what lies behind the glitter. They know how to get people’s goats.

We’ve had this nonsense from the Islamic world several times now. Salman Rushdie. The Danish cartoons. Now Gillian Gibbons. Just as we got fed up with pompous flag wavers and teletubbie bashers, we’re fed up with religious bullies.

We know what annoys and causes our opponents to lose control.

If Gibbons doesn’t make it back to England safely, it’s likely that every other dog in England (and every single bulldog) will be named Mohammad, and taught to relieve itself in front of the local mosque.

You see, there’s only one way to deal with bullies. Make glittering examples out of them.