27 February 2006
When the (cartoon) image is of Jesus, well, then it’s not quite the same issue, there being no prohibition of images of Jesus as there is of Mohammad. But that doesn’t stop the tempests in teapots, as Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed notes, reporting on the small-scale controversy surrounding a series of Jesus cartoons published in a student magazine at Radford University in Virginia. The cartoons, drawn from a Christian perspective by Pentecostal student Christian Keesee, poke ultra-lite fun at Jesus — drawing him into conscience conflicts with lisping gay couples and a topless blonde (as well as into physical conflicts with a knife-wielding Santa) — and, unsurprisingly, they’ve still managed to annoy some of Keesee’s fellow students and believers, leading to some of the publication’s staff being called in to discuss the cartoons with school administrators. Not quite a comparable situation to the riots in the Middle East, but nearly as pointless grounds.