I was really quite shocked when I checked the news several weeks ago to find a controversy blooming over the acquisition of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company by Dubai Ports World. It struck me as obvious that the xenophobic wing of the Republican party would oppose the deal, but I was certain that the more entrenched pro-business wing would overwhelm it with the solid support of the affirmative-action-oriented Democrats.
I could hardly have been more wrong if I had predicted Ralph Nader to win the 2004 presidential election. It seems that the Republicans are much more xenophobic, and more prone to fall to their own "national security" babbling, and the Democrats much more hell-bent on ruining this administration, than I had at first thought. The latter, in hindsight, should come as no surprise. The former, though -- that did catch me off guard. I do not often accuse the right wing in this country of playing politics with security. For example, I have a hard time getting riled up by the Patriot Act since I understand its impetus -- a curious position for a self-identified libertarian.
What is the root of this anti-DPW sentiment? I have a hard time swallowing the idea that all involved just have the country's best interests at heart. My instinct is that leaders in both parties have maneuvered this for their best interest. Both parties want to mobilize the electorate for the midterm elections; the Republicans are desperately trying to find ways to distinguish themselves from this administration as the 2008 hunting season prepares to open; and the Democrats obviously want to cry bloody murder that the administration wants nothing more than a nuclear attack on one of our thriving port cities.
That explains why the true fat cats are attacking this takeover. But what about the rest of us? Why is there so much consensus that it is just plain wrong for an Arab firm to be responsible for our ports?
The answer, I think, is represented by several editorial cartoons that this paper chose to publish in the last few weeks. Mike Luckovich, the ever shortsighted, always sardonic, and often sycophantic editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, recently penned some drawings that were deemed fit to grace this paper's pages. I word it in that manner because not all of Luckovich's cartoons are published -- his artwork only sporadically appears. The punchlines of these cartoons is not important; suffice it to say that in both cases DPW was portrayed as essentially an Ayman al-Zawahiri -- an imposing, brown terrorist fit for nowhere other than a cave.
I am usually skeptical when one engages in that ever-popular move of playing the race card. Racism still exists, for sure, and is a problem, of course -- yet, as a pretty average white guy from a pretty average white area, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that our nation is racist as a whole. I and my friends from home may not have had the chance to interact with a huge amount of minorities while growing up, but the vast, vast majority of us are nothing but respectful of other cultures, as we hope they are of ours.
And yet, I am confronted not once but twice on these very pages by a drawing by a man who by all accounts fits into the American left, that supposedly minority-embracing group, which does nothing but portray a company who is owned by men more like us than any other group in their native region as being owned by a group of Islamists. I might expect this of the backwater right in this country, but the left? I guess racial sensitivity doesn't count when you're smearing George W. Bush. My reaction is summed up by a quote I recently stumbled across, uttered by Penn Jillette: "the lesser of two evils is still evil, and the enemy of my enemy is not my friend."
At the very least, the cartoons were inappropriate. They made no greater statement about the existence of extremism in the Arab and Muslim "world," which is fair game for such a medium; they gave no great insight to the problem at hand. Instead, they unfairly portrayed businessmen as killers.
Even if you disagree with me, imagine if instead of Luckovich's cartoons, you were greeted on this page by a cartoon of a Japanese businessman portrayed as a monkey, as was the case in the WWII era. The terrible choices of a few rulers who happened to be Japanese, or a few terrorists who happen to be Arab, does not make it acceptable to portray all Japanese or all Arabs in such a disgusting way.
There would be no port controversy if the Brits still owned the company. Shared ancestry is not sufficient for shared blame.
