Oh, way to throw a hissy fit. Remember what I said about drawing to much out of a simple phrase? Well, you did it again. Of course when I say you're seeing too much in something, I mean your uneducated (because, after all, you're a foreigner 
).
And no, being from another country does NOT make you instantly better suited to judge such things. You think because your part of one of the MANY groups that targets us, you have the authority? Hah.
This is interesting. Because I contend with something you said, it becomes a) a 'hissy fit' and b) 'targeting' you? The issue of better, I would note - and I would hope it is implicit - is that a stereotype you feel is directed at you has a very different effect than a stereotype directed at someone else; that you can't pick an choose a national stereotype, and thus the way the rest of the world stereotypes you. So whether or not a stereotype applies to a certain group perhaps is not best judged by that group, but by an external factor; for example, I see Groundskeeper Willie in the Simpsons and it quite often seems pretty insulting, etc - but that's because I'm defensive of my own nationality and identity.
Of course it's obvious it's making fun of the U.S., but since when were people living in the U.S. an "unidentified Subgroup?"
Actually, it's making fun of a specific group of, for lack of a better term, insulated middle-America group who are blindly patriotic and unquestioning (rather than, say protestors, or hispanics, etc), but exactly who encompasses that group is very much in the eye of the beholder. For example, here you take it to refer to all of the United States populace and I, admittedly an outsider, clearly interpret it to be referring to very specific group of political views (albeit one whose members are not explicitly specified as whether being all Americans, middle-Americans, all white, what social class, etc). Of course, the lack of having the same perception is in itself illustrative of the difficulties of considering how different cultures can be offended; the US and UK are about as similar as 2 nations can be in cultural terms, yet clearly there's a vast difference of opinion in what that (Bobs) cartoon 'attacks' and how badly.
The Cartoon doesn't just specify a continent, it quite clearly targets the U.S.'s populace. It makes no further distinction.
So, it clearly says US, clearly says the middle of the North American continent, and yet doesn't actually refer to the oft used 'middle America'?
Tres bizarre.
Fair enough. I never denied it. I merely called you out on your claim that Bobb's cartoon targetted a specific subgroup while the Muslim cartoons were meant to be representations of the entire Islamic religon.
No, "who cares" being meant to underline the fact that the Cartoons are not meant to represent ALL of the followers of Islam.
....
Thats their problem. No one elses.
Well, at least, not until they make it everyone else's problems.
Again, this is exactly what I mean by needing to consider other cultures. You see, just above you're saying it's not representative of their religion - and yet here you're saying it's their problem for actually holding it as representative of their religion.
Surely you see the contradiction - you're effectively stating you can define the boundaries of what represents a fairly large cultural group, and what they should identify with, despite being not of that religion. You say 'it's their problem' that their religion is setup such as Muhammad is representative of God / Allah; so presumably we don't have to take
any interest into other cultures when communicating? So any time the Islamic world takes offence, we can easily blame it on them?
What is it, cartoonists asked to draw pictures of their view of Muhammad have
no idea whatsoever of the meaning of that figure? That in itself is worrying when it comes to cross-cultural understanding.
And, of course, I don't believe I've ever said the Danish paper (gah, keep forgetting the name) intended to insult - that'd be a purely assumptive conclusion to make, and the least likely in reality. However, that doesn't mean they didn't insult either, that it wasn't a bad idea and is free from criticism.
It hardly matters. They call themselves Muslim, so that's what the world will call them. There's not much that can be done in that regard.
And I DID NOT SAY ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS. I said most people hear the term terrorists, and nowadays associate it with Muslims. Why? Because their extremists are the most current, obvious example. Did I say it's right to stereotype them that way? NO. I said don't be surprised by it.
And that association is clearly wrong and breeds descrimination, intolerance and secterianism. That's completely my point, and thats why people get offended. What surprises me, is that it's used in the term of discussing how said cartoons aren't labelling all Muslims as terrorists, and yet we have this clear and explicit connotation of exactly that just being accepted as ok because 'some' are; and that some (all, most likely) aren't even accepted as following Islam in these actions by moderate Muslims.
The IRA called themselves 'Irish patriots' - should we have called them that, rather than murderers they are? The likes of Hamas claim suicide bombing Israelis is justified in the interests of freedom for Palestine - do we accept that without question? Do we just take the labels terrorists use to justify themselves and accept them blindly now?
More importantly, what's wrong with 'extremist'? Why does it have to be
Muslim terrorist,
Islamic terror groups? Is it not simply because it's easier to label these things in that way, blame them on a religion, than realise every human creed has the capacity for great evil? Not to mention these labels just hurt in the long run - we insult the moderate Muslims by implying their religion is terrorist, and breed violence because our attempts to deal with said groups can be easily be characterised as crusading against Islam. So it hurts both ways.
But that's kind of beside the point. Do you understand why Muslims could be upset by the cartoons, both the published and faked? Because ultimately, that's all that matters - the understanding... because we're not all supposed to act the same way, are we?
I still see gaping inconsistency here. People are calling these cartoons offensive because they ridicule the negative aspects of Islam, but people do the same thing all the time with Christianity, and I don't hear the same people calling that offensive. WHAT GIVES?
Cultural differences, primarily. The Muslim world increasingly feels under attack by the Christian (western) world, lacks much of the same freedoms of expression and democracy (i.e. other outlets for anger), and that creates a situation that is more volatile. I think, though, the real difference is the scale; there have been similar reactions in the UK by (minority elements of) the Sikh and Christian community due to offensive plays in the UK, but it's not been a cross-national phenomenon. Of course, this may in part be reflected by the Middle East itself being artificially divided by the imperial powers of the 1900s, so there's perhaps more of a cross-national 'culture' than, say, across the UK and France would have. Also the 'Christian world' is increasingly secular and/or aetheistic, and Christianity in general is a less life and culture dominating religion than Islam (based on what I've been told by Muslims).
Albeit I'd note a large part of the whole offense is that what's being ridiculed, is something many Muslims reject as being an
aspect of Islam - terrorism being one. There's, of course, an interesting hypocracy between this and the publication of anti-semitic cartoons in the Arab world, which I wish a politician would/had addressed.
I don't know of any cartoons, though, publlished in national newspapers depicting Jesus as killing children or somesuch in Iraq.
