TODAY I SAT OUTSIDE IN THE MORNING SUN sipping a Tuborg beer (fairly dry with a sturdy bitter afterglow), thinking about Danish cartoons and humming a song I had just composed to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann:

     Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran
     Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran
     Baby bomb Iran
     Baby yes we can
     Bomb Iran ...
     You want to take away my freedom
     Make me bow to your fascism
     Bomb Iran, bomb bomb
     Bomb bomb Iran ...

And so forth. I went inside and prepared a plate of Arla cheese, Lurpak butter and Wasa rye crisps (the crisps were Swedish, but I couldn't find Danish bread at Kroger), grabbed a Carlsberg beer (drier than Tuborg with a sturdier bitter afterbite, but still Danish), and went back outside to my patio table. I would eat Havarti with caraway until the cows came home or the absurd Middle Eastern boycott of Danish goods ended. I too could riot, or at least eat cheese and drink beer riotously.

Some of my favorite people in the world were from Denmark, and any hypocritical, barbaric imams who think the Danes are licentious and all too free have me to reckon with, me and my belt of exploding Tom's chocolate bars I bought on the Internet. The great comedic pianist Søren Kierkegaard, whose tomfoolery with the spinning piano stool, infinite trills, falling piano lids and other musical lapses had amused generations internationally on TV, was of course the Great Dane. Who could forget Kierkegaard's unique style of stand-up, how he would read a children's story and sound out the punctuation? A pop of the lips was a period, a sucking noise a comma, and a combination of the two a question mark, with accompanying descriptive finger motions. Remember? That was free speech, the kind of thing they burn your embassy for in Pakistan. Make a funny sound with your lips in Iran these days and they sentence you to twenty years in a cell with a union bus driver.

No less in my admiration is the religious author, often called the father of existentialism, Victor Borge, whose book Either/Or I proudly display on my bookshelf. One day I will actually read it. I believe it was Borge who wrote, 'The truth shall set ye free, but first it shall make ye miserable.' That's how he told the Muslim totalitarians what a bunch of second-rate losers they are, after which the losers hopped up and down and chanted 'Death to Denmark! Death to America!' in one of those flag-burning orgies they do over there instead of football games or having jobs. And Borge is right. They are losers. Some of those ayatollahs have the towels wrapped around their heads so tightly, they long for the glory of the Ottoman Empire. And the Ottoman Empire, don't forget, also had to import its dairy products.

There are plenty more Danes I admire. Björn Borg, the father of tennis, unless he too, like Wasa rye crisps, is Swedish. And of course Prince Hamlet, the current crowned head of Denmark, who, refusing to apologize for the cartoons, told the press, 'We are free and they are not. The rest is silence.' A Great Dane for sure, that Hamlet, if a bit of a procrastinator. It took him several weeks to come up with that line, and he killed his uncle Polonius after mistaking him for a terrorist. Oops! Or as they say in Denmark, Uffs!

And as I finish off my six-pack of Tuborg, I realize I have overlooked the man who is perhaps my favorite Dane of all. I mean the former star on Danny Thomas's show Make Room for Daddy, Uncle Tenoose from Copenhagen, played by Hans Conried. Now there was a Dane. Unless he wasn't. At this point in my drinking I don't know anyone's nationality, but I do know we are all Danes now, those of us who are free.

So up with Denmark and western freedom, and down with Islamofascism and medieval tyranny! Now pass the cheese and pass the ammunition.


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