>>>To remind y'all, I've been lurking for months now, I live in Cairo, Egypt. One of my back bedroom concrete walls decided to fall down and I had it replaced last Ramadan. The worker had an English magazine, something along the line of The National Enquirer, though he spoke no English...not sure he was literate in Arabic either. For whatever reason, he walks up to me and shows me an advertisement for some diet pill with a before and after illustration of a woman in a modest two piece bathing suit. This man, in his early 20's asked me if this was "sex". I told him it was a medical advertisement (my Arabic is not good enough to discuss the nature of the source). I think this topic has a notable cultural angle. Every culture, regardless of how "progressive" the west might perceive it to be has its sensitivities. >>> I agree. Remember the recent cartoons that caused such a problem? You do not see the mainstream press printing those cartoons because there are possible consequences. However, I live in the United States. Be it writing or photography, I cannot account for the sensibilities of every possible culture. I might offend someone from the Middle East or I might offend someone from Spain; I do not worry about that because I never go out of my way to offend anyone and every culture is different. The web makes everything available to almost every corner of the world, so it is likely that some of us have offended others who stumbled across our web sites. Here in the U.S. of A., we have the right to speak. But on the web, we are not just in the United States. Bob ... Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com |
