Rejoinder
to Washington Times ‘A Dog's Life (and Times)’
By Col. Riaz Jafri
(Retd)
Westridge-1, Rawalpindi
Sorry, a poor effort to defend cartoonist Bill
Garner and eulogize dogs. Apart from what you
say in praise of a dog and the place it holds
in your culture, don’t you demean one’s
dignity by using expressions like ‘an underdog’,
‘a dog’s life’, ‘a dirty
dog’, ‘every dog has his day’,
‘die like a dog ‘ (die miserably or
shamefully), ‘ go to dogs’, ‘dog
in the manger’, ‘try it on a dog’
(meaning a useless inferior), ‘dog-eat-dog’
(a derogatory term for competition), ‘stink
like a dog’, ‘dog-fennel’ (stinking
chamomile). Need any more of male dog derogatory
expressions, though there are a million about
the bitch?
Now coming to the cultural gap between the East
and the West about which you say, ”You can
offend a devout Muslim, as the editorial page
of this newspaper has learned to our chagrin,
with a canine comparison that would cheer a conscientious
Christian.” Strange, that a newspaper of
your caliber did not know it before and has learnt
it only now that such canine comparison could
offend Muslims! Do you really want us to believe
it? No, Sir, you darn well knew it and yet chose
to publish it. And then there could have been
a hundred other ways of depicting compassionately
a lovable dog in a cartoon than a GI holding it
on the leash clearly demonstrating a burly master
goading a hapless servile dog into carrying out
yet another task for him. Come on, Mr. Editor,
I give your intelligence much more credit than
what you are trying to display.
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