On “Justice”
March 25th, 2008Some people need to get over themselves and all their perceived slights against them:
When the owners of Quickie Burger and Dogs chose their logo, they thought it would make patrons crave an order of chili cheese fries. But the logo, a busty woman in a tight shirt straddling a hamburger, has drawn criticism from campus groups. The newest addition to the South State Street landscape has caused a stir on campus with its brightly colored logo, which some believe is offensive. The restaurant, which opened two weeks ago, sits south of campus at the intersection of State and Hill streets. Adorning the blue awning above the restaurant next to its name is an image of a cowgirl riding a hamburger.
The Stonewall Democrats, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender caucus of the University’s College Democrats chapter, has taken offense with the restaurant’s logo and recently began circulating a petition to sway the owners to change the logo. LSA senior Kolby Roberts, a member of the Stonewall Democrats who has led the effort, said he finds the logo’s message inappropriate and offensive. “I have a problem that you take a women riding a hamburger and you put it next to the word ‘quickie,’ ” he said. “It just seems like it’s not putting a good message out there for the objectification of women.”
Maria Arman, whose family owns the restaurant, said the logo was meant to invoke a cowboy theme. “We were thinking beef, rodeo, so instead of putting a cowboy, we just picked a cowgirl,” she said. “It’s a rodeo-style cowgirl riding a bull, but instead, it’s a burger. It was put together to be funny and different. No offense was meant to anyone.” Before selecting a logo for the restaurant, which features a maize and blue color scheme with televisions tuned to ESPN on the interior, the owners showed the logo to more than 100 people and none of them objected, Arman said.
“The people who we talked to told us, ‘It’s a college town and the kids will think its funny,’” she said.
Instead of worrying about whether or not a cheesy-but-amusing hamburger stand is offensive to women everywhere, people should focus on events with real-world repercussions to women everywhere. Like this testament to the lengths the world still has to go to be liberal.
A teenage girl and two young men in Iran have been sentenced to lashes for having sex.
The court dismissed the girl’s claim that she was raped. It said she had sex of her own free will, the official Iran Daily newspaper reported. The girl was sentenced to 100 lashes because her accusations of rape and kidnap could have landed her partners a death penalty, the Tehran judge said. Sex outside marriage is illegal in Iran and capital punishment can be imposed. The young men in the case were sentenced to 30 and 40 lashes each.
The Iran paper quotes the girl, who has not been named, as confessing: “I trusted one of these young men, whom I got to know by phone, and went to his place. “But because he betrayed me, I filed the case against him and his friend out of revenge.”
In December the UN General Assembly voted to censure Iran for human rights violations, including discrimination against women and girls. Tehran rejected the criticism as propaganda. Under Iranian law, girls over the age of nine and boys over 16 face the death penalty for crimes such as rape and murder, while capital punishment can be imposed in certain cases of illegal sexual relationships.
What can I say to that, exactly? It’s absolutely shameful and horrifying to decent people everywhere, right? And as if this were not a great study in contrasts between what people worry about and what they, perhaps, should worry about, then this tells us that nothing is ever clear-cut and no one can be pigeon-holed without you sacrificing insight to the world and those who live in it. George W. Bush has been rebuked by the Supreme Court for asking a lower court not to execute people because their rights were violated. Digest that one for awhile.