Indonesia and Australia are both provincial, unimportant places, far away from the real centres of power, and this likely affects their ability to interpret and respond to current events in a mature way. The cartoon fiasco at present is some evidence of this, certainly if looking at it from the Indonesian side, which I do.

What makes me say this is having just read the editorial by Media Indonesia for the 3rd April, entitled “Rubbish Caricature from Australia”, and probably the dumbest thing I’ve come across in some time, evidence of the extremely low standards of thought to be found among educated people in Indonesia. The summary of it is this:

The cartoon in the Weekend Australian is very rude towards the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It depicts the president as an animal engaged in sexual acts with a Papuan man. It’s rubbish. It’s in bad taste, very bad taste, and shows a low level of culture.

It’s not the work or opinion of the Australian government but a newspaper which enjoys unrestricted press freedom. The bad attitude to Indonesia is nothing new, it goes back a long way.

The Indonesian press is now free as well and has the ability to respond in kind to the caricature. But we shouldn’t stoop to their level, we have a different value system.

End summary.

To spell it out, no mention is made at all of the first salvo in the cartoon wars, the one that was published in Rakyat Merdeka depicting John Howard and Alexander Downer as sex-mad dingoes. Unbelievable cheek on the part of Media Indonesia to ignore this, evidence of an astonishing blindness, a knee-jerk nationalism which seems to remove any trace of intelligence from the writer/s, something which has been so common in the reactions in Indonesia to the current spat between the two unlikely neighbours.