Clemens Wergen at Die Welt has some home truths for the American media on this matter of refusing to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, even the new cover cartoon.
Today the French newspaper Libération published the new cover of Charlie Hebdo which will be on the newsstands on Wednesday. Yes, it is Muhammad again. He is shedding a big tear and holding a poster like so many people did in these days that reads “I am Charlie”. The title of the cover says “All is forgiven”. I can only imagine what amount of self conquest the surviving members of the Charlie Hebdo team had to muster to come up with a cover of such melancholic sweetness after they have lost 8 people, their most important editors and cartoonists among them. Anyone would have understood if they had had put all their rage and mourning into a biting and unforgiving cover. Except that they didn’t. They came up with a cover that speaks of the enlightened humanism Charlie Hebdo embodies, despite its at times scathing style.
Exactly. It’s a shatteringly moving cartoon because of that, and the failure to publish it spits in the faces of the people at CH.
And what did leading American media companies like NBC, CNN, the New York Times and others do? They again refused to show the cover. A disgrace to the surviving editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo just as well as its dead members. It is a disgusting and morally appalling refusal to let Charlie Hebdo speak in its own distinctive voice.
It is not that I don’t understand where you, my American colleagues, come from. You are not fans of the iconoclastic, anti-clerical tradition of Europe where fighting against the church during many centuries meant fighting against power or fighting against the legitimizing force allied to the absolute power of kings and emperors.
I am! Over here! And I’m not the only one. Don’t go thinking we’re all pious about the very idea of religion, because we’re not.
But way too damn many of us are. Still.
You didn’t need to, because your many and diverse faiths never were accomplices to the abuse of power in the way the old faiths of Europe were.
Never? That’s too strong. Slavery for instance got a lot of support from religion.
On the day after the attack the New York Times ran a story with two small covers of Charlie Hebdo as illustration. In order not to offend its Muslim readers, they didn’t print any of the Muhammad cartoons. “Under Times standards, we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities”, the Times said in a statement.
Good grief – what a pathetic “standard” for a newspaper to hold. And it’s a stupid and mindless description of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, too, in fact it’s yet another example of finger-pointing victim-blaming. Their chief purpose was not “to offend religious sensibilities” – it was to undermine the taboo on treating religion like any other subject, and to mock it and have fun with it and sell the paper by doing that. They knew religious sensibilities would be offended, but that’s not the same as deliberately intending to do so.
“After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today’s story.” This “sufficient information” consisted among other things of two small covers of Charlie Hebdo that illustrated the Time’s story on the attack, one critical of socialist French President Francois Hollande and one critical of Marie Le Pen’s right wing Front National. That was absurd because the attackers, which were most probably sent by al-Qaida in Yemen, didn’t shoot Charlie Hebdo’s editors and cartoonists because their socialist or right wing feelings had been hurt. They went on a killing spree because Charlie Hebdo had ridiculed their prophet. And the Times and others basically conceded that they had a right to feel offended.
Maybe they were just afraid, Wergen concedes. Understandable if somewhat silly.
But would you please spare us in the future all this journalist bullshit about speaking truth to power? It is easy speaking truth to power if you criticize and ridicule you own democratic government which won’t kill you or put you in jail for speaking your mind or publishing unfriendly or over-the-top cartoons. But when you are ready to be intimidated by the new Fascist thugs in the world even in those little things and in such a crucial moment you’d better stop all that self-aggrandizing talk about the bravery of the free press. It is striking that the much maligned “new media” had much less inhibition to inform its readers about the issue at hand than traditional news outlets had.
That’s us. He means us. We’re new media. Good job, us.
Myself and a good number of my European colleagues stood with you and all Americans when you suffered the catastrophic attack of 9/11. Now, my dear American colleagues, I feel that many of you have betrayed your European colleagues in what can only be descibed as the 9/11 of European journalism which was perpetrated under the same misguided understanding of Islam that has attacked the American homeland 13 years ago. Where has your moral compass gone?
Ouch, that stings. But I can’t deny it. Hang your heads, New York Times, NPR, NBC. Stand up Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BuzzFeed.
I asked my local magazine shop if they were going to try to get any of this weeks issues (I was surprised when they didn’t seem to know what I was talking about). I would be neat to have a copy. NPRs been on my shitlist lately anyway. I expect better, I suppose. It is one thing for Al Jazeera not to run the cover (though they should, they really should), but NPR? Really?
How would the author know? Hot line to Allah?….
Oh, yes, NPR really. Definitely. NPR is horribly pious. It’s pious about everything, so it’s triply pious about religion.
I have to disagree with this in two ways. First, I think it’s a partial-superficial reading of a cover of a publication about which we know enough to avoid one-dimensional readings. I strongly suspect that the content of the issue will involve sarcastic meanings of “all is forgiven/pardoned” involving their new friends now proclaiming “Je suis Charlie.” I’ll be truly shocked, and disappointed, if the issue is characterized entirely by a “melancholic sweetness.”
Second, I don’t think a biting and scathing style is at all contrary to humanism, and I believe the idea that humanism and “sweetness” are somehow linked, while humanism and rage are somehow inimical, is a very dangerous one.
Ophelia, are we going to talk or are you going to continue running around with your head up your ass?
@ 4 SC
Yes, we must never allow humanism to be corrupted by such nonsense as compassion, empathy, a love of peace, and a respect for the feelings of others. Who the hell came up with this cockamamie idea that humanism was more aligned with love than hate anyway?
(/sarcasm)
No revenge. Just talk.
@ 5 Jesper Both Pedersen
Your approach might need some work.
Shut the fuck up, BOOOOOOOOB.
You guys are fucking fearmongers. For Shame!
@ Jesper Both Pedersen
Any chance you can express in a coherent sentence what the fuck your problem is?
@ Jesper Both Pedersen
You realize if this had been my blog, you would have been banned by now? Your posts lack any content other than abuse.
You demand Ophelia speak to you, yet provide nothing to discuss.
Now before you think you have scored some epic point on Charlie Hebdo, and yes I realize that is your game in this, recognize that I wouldn’t send people with Kalashnikovs to kill you.
Nor would I demand that you don’t get to blog over at your own place on your own platform.
I would simply ban you from wasting everybody’s time here.
Ah, brucegorton, is that what Jesper is doing? Trying to get banned so he can crow ‘gotcha’, cuz comment moderation freezes his peaches? I was wondering. I thought he was either angry because he thinks CH is racist, or drunk. Your explanation makes better sense.
He must be a slimer. It breaks their little hearts when anything happens on FTB that contradicts their phony narrative.
(Ignoring Jesper)
Again, I can’t abide this kowtowing to religious sensibilities. Even as anti-religious as I am, I don’t especially admire people who deliberately offend people’s religious sensibilities…but I fail to see why this should be some sort of journalistic standard. There’s a gazillion pundits and opinionistas being printed every day who write deliberately provocative pieces. Fox News is virtually wall-to-wall offensive opinion. And I fail to see why religious beliefs should be exempt from the cut-and-thrust of normal society. I’d even argue that instead of reducing religious tensions, it actively encourages religious authorities to cultivate a sense of entitlement and avoidance of self-criticism.
The NYT showed the Abu Ghraib abuse images, but now they are refusing to illustrate the story they are reporting for fear of offending Muslims?
Silentbob, it’s morning for me so I might not be as sharp as possible, but I’m not entirely sure where your sarcasm is aimed. So just in case you or anyone misread my post, I’ll clarify. I don’t think that sensitivity, compassion, and respect are remotely incompatible with rage or biting humor. (Sometimes, indeed, “Go fuck yourselves” is a wonderful humanistic response.) Nor do I think “melancholic sweetness” has some necessary link with humanism or is any more humanist of an attitude than any other. I’m not saying any of these attitudes is incompatible with humanism, but that they’re all entirely consistent with it.*
I dislike the use of “enlightened” here, and as a woman and a feminist (and gnu atheist) I have a particular interest in challenging the blanket celebration/recommendation of sweetness and the negativity toward rage. The paragraph I took issue with is also sort of a strange introduction to an article that’s basically about the great – global – humanist tradition CH is part of, not despite its style but including it.
***
I think a sitewide exclusion of posts by this Jesper person is probably in order.
* One person I think uses this range well is Eduardo Galeano.
…your many and diverse faiths never were accomplices to the abuse of power in the way the old faiths of Europe were.
Our religious bigots and con-artists are proving Wergen wrong every day, and have been since our Revolution. I’m sure he’s a decent guy and means well, but he really needs to learn some history.
Don’t mind Jesper, he’s just been banned from PZ’s blog so he’s on a roll looking for somewhere else to hog attention.
I wonder of Clemens Wergen will be scolding the French police for arresting comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala for the crime of twittering.
Farvel, Jesper.