Protecting the right to offend

Violence is never an acceptable response

In my recent post about participating in a French journalism festival, I mentioned that the publisher of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo appeared on one of the cartoonists’ panel discussions. Due to the high security around him, his participation wasn’t advertised and had, at least to my count, five armed bodyguards who followed him around constantly. Those murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo were 10 years ago and this man still has to have around the clock protection.

I drew and wrote quite a bit about the issue of free speech during that time and it still infuriates me that some people feel they have the right to threaten (and even kill) cartoonists just because they feel offended. While most of the world were in solidarity after the massacre, the discussion in the U.S. turned to questions about limiting speech…coming even from the so-called liberals in the media.

And now we have another editorial cartoonist receiving death threats because of a cartoon he drew about the Texas floods. Right wing commentators and even several news outlets are describing the cartoon by Adam Zyglis as “mocking” the flood survivors, which of course it is not. It is a legitimate comment about the Republican hypocrisy of attacking government programs except when natural disasters affect them.

Margaret Sullivan has a good piece about how social media, the “right-wing outrage machine” (although I’d argue the left also engages in this), and ignorance of an editorial cartoon’s purpose all figure into these potentially dangerous situations.

(my graphic essay after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre)