Oh Yeah, COEXIST Is Soooo Offensive

Kay, one our newest members of Team Whallah!, left a comment regarding McBride's attempt to come to Sykes' aid in l'Affaire de Sykes. The thoughts are too good to be left buried in a comment thread, so they are being brought to the forefront:

First, you forgot to tell me to arm myself with booze before checking out her ranting, which I am holding against you.

Second, it's so overwhelming to take apart because virtually every paragraph she wrote is filthy with distortions. I'm going to skip the whole she compares Ann Coulter to Bill Maher(comedian) and later compares Ann Coulter to Maureen Dowd in a response to a question I posed to her........comedian versus a writer for the NYT? Maher is pretty clever and political, but come on.......What I did find really interesting was her mini rant on the COEXIST bumper sticker and the previous prank of switching out the Star of David with a swastika and her explanation of the satirical humor of it. You see she suggests that the "prank" was to point out that Jews cannot expect to live with Muslims---while assuming the crescent moon and star only represent radical Islam (a big fat lie). Now, here's the joke on her and those twits she was defending. I really like that bumper sticker and keep forgetting to buy one for myself. I figured this was a good time to look around and see if I could find the original designer & buy from there. Get this. It's a Polish artist, Piotr Mlodozeniac. And, guess where this piece of art is on display? The Museum on the
Seam for Dialogue, Understanding, and Coexistence in Jerusalem. Seems Israelis pretty much like the idea and design, so much so they bought it and promoted it. You can check out the museum here http://tinyurl.com/yvm8rc and the history of the design here http://tinyurl.com/yroqym

So, uh, exactly which Jews are they protecting from their own choice in art?

From the second link, one can find not only the history of the design, but the meaning of each symbol. And this:

What we do know is that a much simpler variation of this design was created by Piotr Mlodozeniac, a Polish graphic designer, in 2001 for a contest sponsored by The Museum on the Seam for Dialogue, Understanding, and Coexistence in Jerusalem. The Museum has incorporated Mlodozeniac's design into a traveling exhibit and also sells shirts, posters, etc. bearing the design. The Museum claims exclusive ownership of the design.

Even more telling, is that the article goes on to talk of some of the legal issues regarding patents on the design and people trying to cash in on it. the last couple of the paragraphs are equally relevant to l'Affaire de Sykes:

... we want to help distribute this design because we believe the concept of coexistence is too important a concept to be distributed only by a few. The concept belongs to all of us, and should be distributed by many. We would like to see the Museum on the Seam for Dialogue, Understanding, and Coexistence release Piotr Mlodozeniac's design into the public domain. Gerald Holtom made his nuclear disarmament symbol available freely to the public and it has become a universally recognized symbol for peace. We may not have peace, but at least we have a symbol for it.

We will never have peace if we can't at least agree to stop squabbling over simple words like COEXIST.

UPDATE: James Rowen has more on the history of the Museum on the Seam.

Perhaps that is what Sykes and his supporters are most afraid of: Peace.