Sudanese Teddy Bear

I was going to rant about the insanity of a woman arrested, dragged from her home in shackles, because the seven year old students in her class named a teddy bear Muhammad. But I decided not too, because it's too absurd, and now that the judge found her guilty and sentenced her to 15 days in jail, hard-time, I presume, just like Paris Hilton had to serve, it's time to move on to other absurdities.

But still, the thing that got people in Sudan all lathered up about this was the alleged insult to the prophet of Islam. He's dead, isn't he? And how can a dead person be insulted? He has no feelings to be hurt, and no thin skin to be pierced. I could call a teddy bear Teddy Roosevelt, spit on it, poke its eyes out with a stick, dip it in honey and bury it up to its neck in an ant hill, and nobody would threaten me with jail.

If only we could live in a world where the insult is the insulter's problem, and not the insultee's. Where I grew up, kids, when insulted used to chant "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." In Sudan, this just isn't so.