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Friday, July 17, 2015

Charlie is Dead


There is a satirical French weekly magazine that will go on publishing for the indefinite future. The cover contains the label, "Charlie Hebdo." 

But Charlie is dead.

From today's Washington Post (via Pamela Geller):
The top editor and publisher of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French newspaper that suffered a deadly terrorist attack in January, said the publication would no longer draw the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have garnered it worldwide notoriety. 
“We have drawn Muhammad to defend the principle that one can draw whatever one wants,” said Laurent Sourisseau, in an interview this week with Stern, a German magazine. 
But Sourisseau, who goes by the cartoonist nickname “Riss,” said that it was not Charlie Hebdo’s intent to be “possessed” by its critique of Islam. “The mistakes you could blame Islam for can be found in other religions,” he said.
Now that France appears to be on the  one-terrorist incident a week, Sharia or bust track, the central symbol of the resistance has surrendered.

I can't say this is a complete surprise, given what we reported on a few weeks ago.

On the one hand it's easy to be critical. Sourisseau (who survived the attack of six months ago by playing dead) owns 40% of Hebdo's stock. And Hebdo is now flush like it never was before, enriched by eight-million purchases of the initial post-attack issue and by multi-million dollar donations, many of which were implicitly made with the expectation that the paper would continue in its pre-attack form.

On the other hand, I'm sure Sourisseau didn't enter the satire profession to become an actual martyr for a principle. Who does enter a profession for that reason? I assume (though I don't know) that he has a family. Any prominent Frenchman (especially an employee of Charlie Hebdo) who continues to draw funny pictures of Muhammed, is all but signing his or her own death warrant. Did I mention that he probably has a family?

But whatever we say about Sourisseau and the other Hebdo employees (not all) who are going along with him, that doesn't mean we shouldn't weep.

Charlie is dead.

Long live his spirit.

Or does that already ring hollow?

3 comments:

  1. I don't know. They're rolling in money so they can do anything. it's possible they'll pull back on all the insults. Or maybe they'll double them on Christians, Jews and Angela Merkel. That would be really funny. I laugh just thinking about it.

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  2. Charlie is going to stick to picking on Catholics and Jews. Muslims have pretty much kicked butt in France and the US and England won't be coming to the rescue as England's capital is nicked named Londonstan and the US is not looking to good these days due to the sudden jihad syndrome that seems to be affecting some of our fine upstanding, peaceful new citizens.

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  3. Eh, Hebdo was never our friend. It blasphemed the Church as much or more than it mocked Mahound. While it is sad to see them now renouncing even what virtue (such as fortitude) they did possess, they were never one of us, and I don't particularly want Charlie's spirit to live on.

    To be honest, it kind of surprises me that a man who has such a clear view (as evidenced by Flashback post a couple entries after this) of the dangers posed by cozening up to and claiming to be one body with Protestants would proceed post a banner committing the same error with an openly atheist and blasphemous production. The fact that it was attacked by Muslims doesn't make it one with a member of the Church any more than the fact that Baptists and Anglicans are being attacked by Muslims brings them into communion with Rome.

    Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie

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