ABSTRACT
Introduction Yesterday, ALL the significant papers in DK published one of the infamous cartoons again-again. Apparently as a kind of public gesture of solidarity with the cartoonists after the arrest of three immigrants that allegedly had planned an assault on the cartoonist behind ‘The face of Mohammad’ (the one with the bomb in the head). Danish media are totally self-oscillitating into hysteria about this, fearing (hoping?) for a ‘cartoon controversy II’. Checked the Al-Jazeera website last night and they seemed well-balanced in their report about the incident. I do not hope it will interfere too much with the fieldwork – cancelled sight-seeing trips etc. At the check-in, I asked the smiling lady from the agency if any passengers had cancelled because of the re-publication of the cartoons. She was not too eager to answer – seemed distracted, probably thought it was more important to make sure that all managed to get their baggage checked in at the right place. ‘No, we’re full’, she said, ‘most likely they haven’t noticed it, and those who have, don’t care’. Check-in is very efficient, and we proceed to the security area where we queue in stringent lines. Waiting impatiently, unbuckling my belt. I hope that they won’t ask me to take off my shoes, too. I hate standing with the shoes in my hand and trousers dropping down, humiliating! ‘It’s all part of the fieldwork experience’, I think ironically with a nod to David Lodge’s everenergetic tourism anthropologist in Paradise News (Lodge, 1991: 11).
