My duty to make you uncomfortable
OPINION | Chris Britt
Last week, four of my brothers in ink were brutally assassinated as they sat down for an editorial meeting in the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine. Their crime? Drawing cartoons and waging a visual war against religious and political hypocrisy. They were fearless defenders of freedom of expression, and they paid for their boldness with their lives. These cartoonists were relentless provocateurs and ridiculers of injustice and inequality, and they were all well aware of the constant dangers in which their work placed them. As Stephane Charbonnierm, chief editor and cartoonist at the magazine, once declared, “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”
As cartoonists, we have the right and, indeed, the duty to insult, mock and make others uncomfortable. To be downright disrespectful without the fear of reprisal. Simply put, cartoons, regardless of how distasteful or disturbing, cannot kill you – but they can and do set many people into a frenzied state of rage simply by opening the door to an alternative point of view. Many of my cartooning brethren have experienced the vitriol of resentful readers, from the simple, “you stink” message to outright threats of physical violence, even including death. A few weeks ago, a bigoted blowhard of buffoonery, otherwise known as the head of the Fraternal Order of Police in Philadelphia, wrote a touching Christmas letter wishing me and all journalists (or parasites, as he called us) a special trip to hell. While this overreaction to a cartoon seems laughable, it is not quite so funny in light of what transpired in Paris. While most of our readers are nonviolent, there is always the chance that lurking in the shadows, finger on a trigger, is some nut seeking retribution over a difference of opinion. That’s right – opinion – one of the basic rights to which every human being is entitled.
What these recent events in Paris have proved is that images are powerful and that they matter. Political cartoons are not supposed to elicit a chuckle, but rather they should evoke a response from readers, make them question their long-held convictions and open doors to healthy debate. They should make you squirm and perhaps even cause you even to spit out your cornflakes across the breakfast table. But as Ted Rall, one of the best American cartoonists to put pen to paper, asked in his column this week, “How weak is your faith, how lame a Muslim must you be, to allow yourself to be reduced to the murder of innocents over ink on paper colorized in Photoshop?” To be sure, Islamic extremists are not the only hypocritical holy rollers who can’t handle cartoons. In a recent statement, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, basically said that the cartoonists in Paris had it coming to them. What I suspect is that Donohue gives not a rip about Muslims or their faith, but is still stinging from the countless cartoons created by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists lampooning his own faith and its leaders. Blaming the victims is a particularly nice touch, coming from a leader of a religious organization based on the idea of defending free speech rights. Donohue has caricatured himself into nothing more than a bully, liar and an embarrassment to the Catholic church.
The cowards who murdered these cartoonists and others, including two police officers, have failed in their mission to intimidate by slaughter. What they have achieved through their violence is to fuel marches in support of those who lost their lives following three days of deadly attacks and to spread more widely than ever the images they found so offensive. They have galvanized the world to come together to embody the profound words of another famously outspoken Frenchman, Voltaire, who said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Violence will not be the death of truth or the right to speak it – not when there is still ink in the pen and fire in the belly.
An exclusive cartoon by Chris Britt appears weekly in Illinois Times. Jim Hightower’s column, which normally appears on this page, is posted at illinoistimes.com and will return to the print edition next week.
