When you're living in a 24-hour news cycle fueled by manufactured controversies, it can be hard to tell which stories are actually worth getting worked up over (like the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party winning a Senate seat), and which ones are of no real importance (like the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party winning a Senate seat).
A Look Back In Anger is our weekly glance back at what had us outraged exactly 12 months ago. Which stories are still with us a year on, and which ones vanished without a trace? Who forgave and forgot, and who maintained the rage?
Come with us back to the long, long ago time of September 10-16, 2012...
This was the week when more than 50 people died because of a movie trailer. Depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a murderer and a paedophile, the Innocence Of Muslims clip was uploaded to YouTube in July, but didn't cause an absolute worldwide shitstorm until September 11, when violent protests broke out in Egypt. This was followed by attacks on US embassies around the world; in Pakistan alone, local newspapers reported at least 23 people were killed in just one day. The video that ignited the furore was described by Vanity Fair as "exceptionally amateurish, with disjointed dialogue, jumpy editing, and performances that would have looked melodramatic even in a silent movie", and yet somehow still better than The Room.
Just in case you think this was something that only happened over there, a protest against the film was held in Sydney on September 15. The crowd carried signs with witty messages like "Behead all those who insult the prophet" and "Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell". In the end, 19 protesters and six police officers were injured. Leaders of 25 local Muslim organisations declared the protests "unacceptable and un-Islamic"; Prime Minister Julie Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott both condemned the violence, marking the last time they agreed on anything aside from how much they wanted to punch Kevin Rudd in his stupid face.
YouTube blocked the video in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, India and Singapore, which makes you wonder how all those twerking clips are still on there. When YouTube refused to remove the video in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan and Pakistan, those governments took the dispute to the next level and removed YouTube, sending their people hurtling back to the pre-viral dark ages of 2005.
The Obama administration asked YouTube to review its decision to host the video in any country; the video-sharing giant replied that despite being anti-Islam, the video was not anti-Muslim, and therefore not "hate speech". On September 27, Innocence Of Muslims writer and producer Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a US resident, was sentenced to one year in prison and four years of supervised release for violating terms of his probation. His imprisonment could only have been the result of a US conspiracy against freedom of speech, because it's not like he'd already served time for cooking meth and bank fraud or anything.
Syrian anti-government activists with a surprisingly decent sense of perspective expressed frustration that Arabs were more outraged by the video than by the rising death toll in Syria. "The only thing that seems to mobilize the Arab street is a movie, a cartoon or an insult, but not the pool of blood in Syria," tweeted one Syrian activist, as if getting disproportionately angry about a movie or a cartoon was a uniquely Arab trait.
So when the heck is Innocence Of Muslims coming out, anyway? I mean, the trailer came out a year ago.
Meanwhile, French mag Closer and Italian gossip rag Chi both published topless photographs of Kate Middleton on September 13. The pics were taken from half a kilometre away while Middleton was sun-bathing in a private chateu. An injunction was granted to stop further publication; Closer's editor described the public outcry caused by the blatant and downright creepy violation of Middleton's privacy as "a little disproportionate". Despite Prince William's status as the next Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Anglican extremists did not take to the streets in protest.
Meanwhile, crafty Taliban insurgents finally got around to seeing Catfish and were revealed to be posing as "attractive women" on Facebook to befriend soldiers and gather intelligence. As a result, some troops argued for a total social media ban. "I see too many members who post info/pics of themselves which identify... what unit they belong to and where they are serving," said one soldier who clearly spends too much time on Facebook.
The White House released a draft executive order detailing how it would improve America's cybersecurity, because Americans have a fundamental right to privacy and... Nope. Sorry. Can't get through this one with a straight face.
In Russia, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov criticised the West for failing to condemn terrorist acts in Syria. "It is unacceptable to interfere in the crisis in Syria through supporting one side over the other," Lavrov said — in layman's terms, it's baddies versus baddies.
Noted baddie Chris Brown's new tattoo had people talking — it appeared to depict his ex-lover Rihanna's bruised and beaten face. His publicist later explained that the tattoo was actually a sugar skull associated with the Mexican Day of the Dead juxtaposed with a MAC cosmetics design. Either way, the resemblance was striking, but it probably still doesn't crack the list of the 10 dumbest things Chris Brown has done in the past three years.
Reports surfaced that male members of the Australian swimming team had behaved badly in the lead-up to the Olympics, taking the sleeping medication Stillnox (which was banned from the Australian camp) and upsetting their teammates with prank calls and late night door-knocking. Australia promptly lost its mind at the stunning revelation that James Magnussen might be kind of an arsehole, because hey, it's not like anything important was happening anywhere anyway.
Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone 5 on September 13. Despite his promise that "everything has been enhanced", observers weren't convinced — the Wall Street Journal felt the gadget was short on innovation and Wired called it "utterly boring". So, you know, the same stuff they said this week about the iPhone 5s. How long until we can accept that Steve Jobs isn't coming back?
One man who was spending a lot of time on his phone was Wests Tigers star Robbie Farah, who responded fiercely to a Twitter troll's disturbing comment about Farah's recently deceased mother. "u worthless piece of shit," Farah replied to @maxpower118 (yep), "If u had the balls to say that to my face I would rip your face off".
Farah decided this would be a good time to join Charlotte Dawson's crusade against internet trolls, tweeting at Julia Gillard (who was grieving the recent death of her father) that "people need to be accountable for their comments". Alas, Farah had some comments of his own to account for — in September 2011, he tweeted that he wanted to buy Gillard "a noose" for her 50th birthday. Of course, by this point, lots of people had said terrible things about Julia Gillard. It's just a hundred dollar fine now.
If the pressure was getting to Julia Gillard, there was one thing that should have eased her mind — poll results revealed that Tony Abbott's popularity had slumped to an all time low. A Nielsen poll had just 30 per cent of respondents choosing Abbott as the Preferred Liberal Leader, giving Abbott absolutely no chance to romp to victory and swamp our social media channels with progressive tears one year later.
Finally, the first photos of the rebooted RoboCop were released, leading fanboys to decry that his new body armour made him look too much like Batman. Thankfully, fears that the reboot would just be a Batman rip-off were allayed when the trailer, in which Michael Keaton asks for RoboCop to be given an all-black paint job, was finally released this week.
I mean, an unfaithful RoboCop trailer? Now this means war.
