Both the NYT and WaPo are part of my daily news-gathering routine, so they are often both open in my navigator.
I captured this screen-shot quite by accident while trying to figure out how the "Imp écran" (French keyboard!) button works best when there's a second screen (vital when I do translating work) jacked into my laptop.
Anyway, seeing this image pop up unexpectedly made me feel compelled to follow the dictates of chance and share it.
The Gid and I don't want to live in a world where we censor ourselves out of fear -- either fear of insulting someone or fear of reprisals. I'll go out on a limb and guess most artists and writers feel the same aversion. So, in solidarity with our extended tribe, on the day Charlie Hebdo bravely hits the newsstands, we'll say "Je Suis Charlie" -- "Nous Sommes Charlie" -- here on LoS one last time.
It ain't much, but it's something.
The US media's self censorship is disappointing. Although I partly understand that they don't want to bring harm to themselves, it's still a bit sad that showing a cartoon like that could bring such ramifications. This is where the Internet saves the world, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteIs your last comment ironic, or do you mean save the world in the sense that perhaps millions of people will now share the cartoons and they can never be suppressed? It's weird people would kill over a cartoon, hard to get inside of that head. I keep thinking about that poor cop. Killed by fellow Muslims protecting people who were mocking his religion, the very cause of why he had to protect them in the first place. I really hope this latest issue of CH doesn't result in more killings. Maybe they'll come back with this defiant image and then calm it down a bit for a while. Maybe even without more cartoons at all, Mohammed ones I mean, they'll still be a target, just because they've kept the vehicle of past blasphemy running; I'm sure extremists will conclude Charlie hasn't learned its lesson. And many non-extremists too. A lot of people are blaming the magazine for all this.
ReplyDeleteYes, I mean people all over the world will see this cartoon, and others, despite the censorship. I have hope that people will then think, and possibly break out of whatever brainwashed state they're in. I will note that extremist reactionaries are seeking to exploit this for their own movements, mostly antisemitic.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same about that murdered policeman. It is gutwrenching abd tragic.