A series of cartoons appearing in the Tunisian newspaper al Arabiya that lampooned Vice President Dick Cheney and his hunting victim Harry Whittington brought a violent reaction in several affluent American communities today. The cartoons, drawn by well-known Tunisian artists and done "just for fun," said al Arabiya editor Salaam Bourguiba, depicted Cheney as the Great Satan, as a menacing warmonger carrying weapons of mass destruction, and as scowling, bald, heavyset man with a shotgun. Whittington was wearing a burkha in one cartoon, and portrayed as an angelic, innocent bystander in the others.
The first appearance of the cartoons in the West was in The Drudge Report. Within an hour, said Darien Mayor Charles Osgood Wellborne, 'The Starbucks, Neiman Marcus and Elizabeth Arden were buzzing. It didn't take long for people to take to the streets." Outraged matrons blocked off Connecticut Avenue in Darien with a group of Range Rovers, Porche Cayennes and Lexus RX 400s, and began to burn figures of Arabs and Howard Dean in effigy. Soon, businesses had their windows broken and a fire broke out in the Manolo Blahnik store. "It was a nightmare," said Blahnik store manager Manuel Puentes. "These women can be tough, especially if you tell them they are size seven when they think they are five. But this was different--it was like they were possessed." It took thirty Darien police officers, with help from nearby Greenwich, to quell the riot. Six people were hospitalized and seventeen arrested.
An eerily similar scene occurred in affluent Detroit suburb Grosse Pointe, with the main difference being that the cars used to block the streets in the shopping district were Cadillac Escalades and Lincoln Navigators. But Detroit police, called in for help, were able to use their experience from riots and arson after major sporting events and on Halloween, to stop the violence before it caused more substantial damage. However, seven middle-aged women suffered injuries ranging from serious contusions to broken bones, while a senior executive with the Ford Motor Company had to be hospitalized with a mild heart attack after a policeman sprayed Mace on him when he refused to drop a rock. Disturbances and some property damage were also reported in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Potomac, Maryland, and two suburbs of Houston, Texas.
In Washington, a group of nearly fifty protestors led by Ann Coulter chained themselves to the fence in front of the Tunisian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. Police had to use wirecutters to remove them, and needed to drag the protestors, who fell to the ground and refused to leave, to waiting police wagons. "This is not the end of it," vowed Coulter at her arraignment. "We will not let this outrageous blasphemy stand. The honor of the Vice President will be restored." The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 223.7 points after the news of the riots reached Wall Street.