Charlie Hebdo massacre: the march of the morons has already started

http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/ Yesterday I said that it is not a good time to score political points. Time to mourn. But the morons are relentless, and there is no stopping them. So at least we can start the count…

Well, when the issue came up of the Danish cartoons [of Muhammad] I observed that the test I apply to something to see whether it truly is satire derives from H. L. Mencken’s definition of good journalism: It should ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’ The trouble with a lot of so-called ‘satire’ directed against religiously motivated extremists is that it’s not clear who it’s afflicting, or who it’s comforting. This is in no way to condone the shooting of the journalists, which is evil, pure and simple, but our society makes a fetish of ‘the right to free speech’ without ever questioning what sort of responsibilities are implied by this right.

But valuing free speech and mourning the dead do not necessitate that we adopt the same behaviour as Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper that frequently outraged French Muslims with its insulting and occasionally pornographic depictions of Muhammad.

Charlie Hebdo “mocked everyone, not just Muslims,” many will insist. One hopes, however, that satirists train their sights on the rich and powerful, the pompous and privileged. Punching up, in other words. The Muslim community in France is not those things, but in the rush to declare themselves allies, many people outside the country are happily sharing and republishing material that would normally be deemed, at best, in rather poor taste. Wednesday’s tragedy does not retroactively excuse the newspaper’s regular targeting of a religious minority, just as that newspaper’s provocative output does not excuse the murder of its journalists.

There is much more there in the linked article, if you can stand it.

Here are instructions from CBC Journalistic Standards & Practices director @DavidStuder1 to journos. #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/96SGGs0IzY
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) January 7, 2015

And now to the loony part of the same crowd.

And a few other, unidentified elements:

How intricately it is all interrelated, isn’t it? http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/