Bystanders

There is a psychological concept called the bystander effect. It's the observation that we are less likely to offer assistance to someone in distress if we are part of a crowd as opposed to when we are on our own. The idea is that we assume that someone else will take action and that we're not personally responsible for the well-being of some stranger. I mention this as a prelude to a resurfaced memory that provides an exception to the bystander effect.

I can't recall the exact location except to say that it was in some International Airport (probably in the U.S.) and I can't say how long ago it was except I was probably between five and ten years old at the time.

Whenever it was, I was travelling with my family (father, mother, sister). At that time, we were traveled frequently for two main reasons. We would visit my father's family in Israel on a regular basis and my parents were travel agents.

In this airport we were sitting together in some waiting area. Our seats were close to a large open area where hundreds of travelers passed each other on the way to their boarding gates.

As we killed time before going to catch our flight, my father became distracted. He noticed something in the distance that bothered him and he couldn't ignore it.

I believe at some point he probably shared his concerns with the rest of us He might have said something like: "Why isn't anyone helping him?" What he had noticed was a blind man trying to navigate his way through that open area without any assistance.

It wouldn't have been much later that my father took his leave of us so he could go over and help that blind man himself. After assisting him in reaching wherever he was headed, my father rejoined us. I don't ever recall him discussing it further.

I've always thought that my father's actions were just a good deed. That there wasn't a need to explain why he would go out of his way to assist a stranger in need. The only thing was that I was missing an obvious connection that my father had with that man.

For most of her life, my paternal grandmother lived with limited sight. As a young mother an accident had robbed her of one eye and damaged the other. Year's later, glaucoma took was sight was left in her remaining eye. For the last few years of her life, my grandmother required regular care and attention from her children and grandchildren. Because my father lived thousands of miles away, he wasn't usually around to participate in caring for her.

I can't say with certainty why my father helped that blind stranger so many years ago. Yet, I can't doubt that his mother was on my father's mind when guiding a blind person like he done before with her.

Why did my father overcome the bystander effect to help a complete stranger? Why did he take on the burden to help out when there were others who could have done so? My educated guess is that it was the closest thing a son could do to express his love for an absent mother.

Righteous Arabs

I feel fortunate to have caught the PBS documentary "Among the Righteous" before it expired on Netflix. It documents the work done by Robert Satloff to uncover accounts of Arab Muslims who helped to save Jews from the Holocaust. It includes some very inspiring stories and provides a glimpse into an aspect of that era that I knew little about.

The PBS website for the documentary can be found here.
Satloff also wrote a book with the same title.

African Heroes

I finally got around to watching "The Last King of Scotland" and I was impressed.

Forrest Whittaker deserves all the praise he received for playing African Dictator/Supervillain Idi Amin. There was also a great cameo by Gillian Anderson. She really deserves to been seen on screen more often without playing Scully.

It was also interesting to find that the film's climax involved the backdrop of the Entebbe hostage crisis.

Despite the film's strengths, it has left me with a lingering question. Is Hollywood unwilling to produce movies about Africa without casting white actors in the lead? The only exceptions I can think of are Hotel Rwanda and possibly Invictus. Also, "The Number One Lady's Detective Agency" series for HBO usually has an all-black cast.

I guess the simplest explanation is that major film producers don't trust that audiences will show up for movies about Africa if they don't have white characters to identify with. This practice isn't limited to Africa. Similar techniques are apparent in films like "Dances With Wolves", "Lawrence of Arabia", and "The Last Samurai". Frequently when certain foreign cultures are featured, we are treated to a whitewashing of the main protagonist.

Which leaves me with my second question. How large a market is there for non-foreign produced films that feature exotic (to Americans) cultures with a "native" as the protagonist?

Muslim Punk?

The October 4, print edition of Rolling Stone has an article on a recent tour of Muslim Punk Bands called Taqwatour.

How cool is that?

I love cultural fusion.

Some of the bands mentioned include The Kominas, Vote Hezbollah (it's a joke), Al-Thawra, and Secret Trial Five.

Blind Man vs. Muslim Cabbie

First, there was a dispute over the rights of cab drivers in Minnesota to refuse service for passengers who were carrying alcohol.

Now, a blind man from Vancouver, B.C. has sued a cab company over being refused service because of his seeing eye dog.

Both cases dealt with a balancing of the religious convictions of the Muslim drivers and the rights of passengers to get a ride without too much hassle.

This discrimination might not require a great deal of government intervention, if it wasn't for the fact that the drivers were operating under a license to drive a cab. Such a privilege should come with some public responsibilities. After all, where would such religious convictions end? Should it be permissible to discriminate against passengers who carry pork? An unmarried couple?

I'm all for accommodating religious beliefs, but not at the expense of the work being done.

Donohue Has A Point

As much I might be loathe to agree with anything that Catholic League President Bill Donohue has to say, I think he makes a good point.

The right-wing curmudgeon thinks that the papers that have dropped the Opus strip have a double-standard. It seems in the past they've published cartoons that made fun of Catholics.

He's right. Newspapers should feel free to make fun of all religious beliefs with equal abandon. It's not fair that the Catholics get to have all of the fun.

Still, it seems to be overlooked that the vast majority of newspapers that carry Opus have decided to show the controversial strips. This is nowhere near the Danish cartoon controversy, where you would have a hard time finding a paper that would reprint the comics in question.

Peter Irons On Defamation

Recently blogger P.Z. Meyers has become the subject of a lawsuit based on a negative review he gave a book which attempted to take on evolutionary theory.

Now, noted legal scholar Peter Irons has weighed in on the merits of the case in an open letter to the plaintiff.

Just a little bit on Peter Irons. He's published multiple works dealing with our right and liberties as Americans, but probably his finest achievement was his work on behalf of Japanese Americans who were interred during World War II. By reopening the cases of Fred Korematsu and others, Irons helped get their convictions vacated. A contribution which made some progress in correcting an injustice made decades ago.

Opus Revealed

So, this is what the fuss is all about.

If anything, it looks like a playful ribbing of the cultural differences between Islam and Western culture. Of course it deals with generalizations, but not something that readers can't appreciate as a shortcut to humor. Yet, the main thing is that the cartoon by Berkeley Breathed isn't mean. It's nowhere near some of the barbs that the late Johnny Hart ( of B.C. fame) would make about Islam or any other belief that didn't coincide with his own. If anything Breathed makes as much fun of Americans as he does Muslims.

Even if you can't appreciate the humor of Opus, I can't see a reasonable justification for newspapers to drop this strip.

Update:

There's an article in Editor & Publisher dealing with the controversy. The reasons given for papers not carrying Opus are a combination of Islamic references and sexual innuendo. At least 25 clients have declined to publish the offending comics. Prior reports have mentioned the Washington Post as one of those papers, a really poor example coming from one of the nations flagship media institutions.