Empty old bottles floating in vinegary old wine

If you can read this "Urth" letter you'll learn that there was apparently a serious problem way back in 1953 with Western depictions of Middle-Eastern hats--fortunately the cartoon was never shown in Egypt and that probably saved scores of lives, along with the cost of replacing a burned embassy. Then there're the negative effects of closing the Suez Canal to international traffic, all because of a hat.

This was just one in a long line of "incidents" involving tonsorial insensitivity on the part of "Da Urther" West.

Here's a sample of others:

• The Fifth Crusade was sparked by a vague incident supposedly involving the Sultan, the Venetian ambassador, and a Washington Redskins baseball cap. The Sultan's troops sacked Constantinople
• An earlier fez incident took place in 1914 in, coincidentally, the Moroccan city of Fez, when visiting fez-topped Shriners--there to open a new children's hospital--were taken prisoner by "anti-Western fanatics" and brutally de-fezed (actually an awful mistake as the miffed Moroccans were in fact anti-Country Western fanatics and mistook the miniature-wagon riding shriners--this was before the tiny car was perfected--for cowpokes)
• In 1926 the new Mexican president Julio Sasquatcho refused to shake hands with a sombrero-wearing Calvin Coolidge--the relationship between the neighboring nations cooled noticeably following the meeting (to be fair, many say the sombrero was so gigantic the Mexican leader couldn't get close enough to the President to shake hands)
• Sudanese rioted for ten days after a League of Nations delegation--all sporting the new wildly popular propeller beanies--arrived in their country for talks on irrigation and agricultural development in 1934
• Mongolia briefly (and ineffectively) declared a yak-dung embargo on Great Britain in 1967 when an advertisement appeared in The Sun showing a Mongolian yak-herder wearing a bowler
• In the late Eighties, Syria ejected all Russian military advisers after their leader, during a state visit to the USSR, was offered a balloon hat by a clown at the Moscow Circus
• Not cultural hat incidents per se, but the Prime Minister of Denmark was once attacked and mauled by an enraged squid probably because he was wearing a bright red tie, and the French Minister for Culture received a bad bite on the nose from a cockatoo when he unthinkingly snapped his suspenders in front of the temperamental bird

Today, of course, with sensitivities screwed up as tightly as they are, one shudders to contemplate the Middle-Eastern response if Mister Magoo ever turned up in a fez again or someone snapped their suspenders, especially if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. This is a very real possibility as it's rumored Pez-headent Boosch likes to spend his evenings relaxing with pipe and book while garbed in a robe, slippers, and fez. (Sweet Wotan! Does he put his feet up on an Ottoman?) What we may ultimately see there on our goofy Echo World is a sort of unique culturally-relative arms race with the Iranians justifying building additional atomic bombs every time the West offends them with an inappropriate hat or mismatched socks. Who are we to criticize what others find important and unimportant.

Greasepeace spokespeopleperson Edwina Longhorne Schnifterlifter summarized it well: What do we expect?! For years we forced modern technology, medicine, agriculture, and engineering down these people's throats, and now, virtually at gunpoint, we're making them adopt culturally alien and unreasonable Euro-centric ideas about headwear, freedom, democracy, women's reproductive rights, worker's rights, gay rights, child-abuse, slavery, and respect for other religions and cultures and......uh......um.......