Esther

Dr. Hamid

I would rather rehabilitate Hajiagha than dream of correcting you!  Thank you for Natalia's Persian name, which I have delivered.  A wise man bearing three gifts.  What a strange Christmas this is turning out to be (and it's only just after Thanksgiving)! 

Hamid jaan simplicity or complexity. Is that the question?!

Your question sounds simple but I'm afraid my response may be a bit more multi-dimentional aka metro-sexual! Just kidding, this is what Hajiagha might have said! LOL

First of all many readers believed Hajiagha the person and Hajiagha the cartoon character were the same.  Hajiagha did not try to disuade them from this image.  However, in the feminist debate and in some of his other comments he had alluded to the fact that he draws and sends these cartoons to antagonize the people he is depicting in these cartoons!  Get it, does that make sense?  It does to me. He couldn't do it if he'd make the distinction between himself as a person and as a cartoon.

If you notice these days people are haggling over the same political issues back and forth with the same nonsense over and over again.  They don't even change or revise and update some of their positions or attitudes.  It is just like a tape recorder.  Would they do the same thing in person as in their i.com's character?  Would they get into to a fist fight if they argued the same arguments in person as they do in i.com?

Now there were handful of cartoons (out of thousands) in the old i.com format, w/out direct reader comment ability and readers responded only through letters to editor which JJ published as they were, that were seriously sexist and truly offensive.  That may have been during Hajiagha's peak performance!  I'm sure Haji himself found those especially offensive! 

So the question is was it sexist for Hajiagha to draw those cartoons or for JJ to publish them?  This despite the fact that readers strenously objected (ala Demi Moore in Few Good Men ;-) to these cartoons and asked JJ to remove them or loose them as readers and contributors.  JJ of course did no such thing and continued day after day publishing cartoon after cartoon and never gave any explanation other than in that feminist debate which I provided a link to.  JJ may have provided some other explanation some other time but I'm not aware of it.

Hajiagha's departure was not due to his cartoons, it was due to JJ deleting some of his comments on people's contribution which made Haji mad and called it censorship and once he made more objectionable comments he was let go.

So if Haji was to come back and post similar cartoons (and won't comment again) do you think JJ would feature them?  I don't know.  He was certainly not that picky 2 or 3 years ago.

I won't go into why and who was Haji depicting in his cartoons! I think you provided the basis for his attitude and luck in your earlier comment. 

Everything is sacred.

Setareh (QoDs)

Some of them are known to eat the pistachios and stuff the shells with peanuts.   I say off to the dungeon next to the dragons and malcontent emigrants with them.  As for chickens, why no a chickens?  Viaduck?  Why a horses?  (And why all these Marx Brothers references?)  And you have a kind way of correcting.  I meant bovine but it came out equine, even though equines being called fat cows would have been more clever if I had meant it.  One last word about Hajiagha’s unhappiness with himself: Canada can’t be all that bad if the hard-to-please French find it one of the few acceptable places to migrate to.Natalia’s name is a challenge.  Iranians call Christmas “Noel” some of the time, “Christmas” or “janvieh” other times.  None of them are Persian.  Noel is a male name and janvieh is a month.  The closest I can come up with is Yalda. Iranians celebrate it as the longest night of the year after which one can look forward to winter finally rolling back in defeat.  It might also have been one of the pagan celebrations that evolved and coalesced into Christmas.  I have a biased theory that Yalda is where the word yuletide comes from.  So Yalda is my closest Persian word for Natalia.  As a term of endearment her family can call her Yaldita.

Anonymouse jan

I'll take your word for it since I didn't follow him closely.  Hajiagha the person or the cartoon character?  Is it his simplicity that has stirred fascination in so many (or in my case pity)?

Dr. Hamid & Anonymouse

Dr. Hamid, welcome to our humble blog!  We asked the servants to bring some pistachios, but they just told us to change the avatar ourselves.

It is unfortunate that Hajiagha did not share your kind impressions of my country (for whatever self-serving reasons), and that Anonymouse decided Hajiagha's favorite thing to suck to must remain Canada.

As for the chickens, yes, why the chickens?  Bovines are already mad cows, and turkeys are already turkeys.  But equines remain fair game (as does game).  I prefer to focus on the behavior rather than on the unchangeable characteristics, so I still say better jerk chicken than Jamaican chicken.  Watch out for Chinese chicken in the next episode!

Given the time of year, I'm sorry I could not provide Chinese turkey.  Should you be feeling seasonably charitable, and should you not mind if those with noms de guerre take them on the warpath, you have another Persian name request.  Her name is Natalia, though!

Anonymouse, you said yourself that Hajiagha was not one-dimensional (see HG7).  Especially around punny Hamids (see HG1).  Watch out for Jenny (and Bijan and Manijeh ;) in the next episode!

Hamid jaan your analysis is complicated, Hajiagha isn't! ;-)

Everything is sacred.

Insulting chickens

It makes one wonder why, after all the trouble one must go through to be able to allowed into the country, of all the neat things in Canada someone would only find  and exaggerate those not to their liking.  Was it that living in a seedy part of town at the very end of Yonge Street in a condemned building, next to the pool hall and the chopshop, occupied by dysfunctional families so traumatized them that they forgot nobody twisted their arms into emigration?  Or was it that they didn't comprehend the concept of social freedoms?  It's bad enough to insult a whole country, especially one that kindly shields the rest of us from frigid weather by absorbing all the arctic fronts and extracts tons of tree juice to make half an ounce of maple syrup so we don't have to suffer that chemical tasting Aunt Jemima juice.  But it's completely uncalled for to insult an entire species, all avianity, by calling chickens jerks.  What's next, calling equines fat cows?

Esther jaan I thank you w/ or w/out the feminist debate review!

Hajiagha was the most popular, on top (most discussed ;-) all the time! Oh well, have a good weekend!

Everything is sacred.

Anonymouse

It seems that there are very few people as fond of Hajiagha as you, or as fond of Canada as me. ;)

Setareh (QoDs) is sorry that she did not review your "Hajiagha vs. feminists" debate (it has 5 pages of comments!).  If you agree that her current efforts qualify her as a "great 12 rooshanfekr", she will consider reviewing your "Hajiagha vs. feminists" debate for her next degree.  However, please remember that she has only been on i.com since April or May, she doesn't know Farsi, and she is only queen of diamonds with a lost heart - cut her a little slack! :)

PS If you are going to require her to review "Hajiagha vs. feminists", she is going to require her Persian poetry-reading man not to be a misogynist.  In fact, she will require that in any case.  Sucks to misogynists!

Hajiagha's mission in life is to stop Iranians from going to Ca!

Well I'm glad someone has found it worthwhile to put together a review!  Thanks! Actually, the first person to become interested in Hajiagha was none other than JJ himself.  This is despite the fact that in the old format readers would send him thousands of emails objecting to Haji and asking JJ to drop him.

JJ once explained his fascination with Hajiagha in my Hajiagha vs feminists debate, in his comment here, which by the way you did not review which is now making me crushed and sobbing!  Uhoo, uhoo, uhoo ;-(

Haji represents many Iranian men (sometimes refered to as a 'puny man' ;-) but none of them would ever associate themselves with Haji and would use him as a scape goat while they're exactly like him!

It is sad that JJ had to let him go after so many years.  I guess all good things come to an end.  His cartoons these days would've been like a lightening rod that would've humbled our otherwise rough political potato heads!

The only way Haji will stop sucking to Canada is if he moves out of Canada, until then it'll be Sucks to Canada! Oh Canada!

Everything is sacred.