I was just talking to a relative, who lives in France.

[Archae]

Part of his job.

He told me that the magazine targeted didn't have many readers, and in fact had gone out of business years ago.

When they started it up again, they decided to go the "offend everyone" route, to gain notoriety and thus more readers.

So he told me there probably will be a spike in readership, but the magazine will go back down to "noise level" fairly soon.

Oh, and he told me the issues he did see were not funny.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I don't care how offensive and unfunny they might have been.

What happened was an outrage. I'd feel the same way even if somebody blew up Fox News or the Wall Street Urinal. There's no justification for violence against any media outlet, even one that sucks.

[Archae]

5. No one doubts that.

Except a few news outlets are lionizing the magazine, puffing it up to be more than what it actually is.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. That's to be expected, but it's entirely beside the point.

[Moondog]

26. Hear, hear.

[fadedrose]

69. ++

[Brickbat]

2. Okay.

[zappaman]

3. Not sure of your point here.

[Archae]

7. A few news outlets are puffing up the magazine, making it seem more noble than it actually is.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. So should the headlines be:

"Employees Of Marginal Humor Magazine That Tried To Be Outrageous But Never Was Very Funny Murdered By Terrorists"? Again, the quality is irrelevant. And I would also say that there is something pretty courageous about publishing stuff that you know might get you attacked by extremists.

[Brickbat]

17. .

[Archae]

18. It can really depend on why the material is put out in the first place.

My relative says the magazine puts out the offensive stuff JUST to be offensive, and get attention.

There are people who do that here in the US, from Ann Coulter to Andrew "Dice" Clay.

[Lobo27]

42. That seems to be an opinion?

Should we take what your relative says as the truth? And again what did they do to deserve death?

[arcane1]

48. Everyone on DU agrees: they did not deserve death.

[Dreamer Tatum]

57. Not everyone. nt

[Fumesucker]

4. Evidently Paris is a very "tough room"

Most of the time the audience does not slaughter the comedians if they're not sufficiently funny.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. It can't be that tough; they think Jerry Lewis is funny.

[Archae]

9. Even "Which Way To The Front?"

(Yes, I saw that movie.)

[Fumesucker]

12. Funny, I was going to mention Jerry Lewis being popular there

I wonder if the relative in question also has an appreciation for Jerry's brand of humor.

[NYC_SKP]

10. I was attacked for saying that it was cheap vulgar humor, but that it might have made a profit.

.
And I was attacked for not agreeing with people who seem to think it was noble and important free-expression and yada yada yada.

Attacked for freely expressing a very harmless minority opinion by people claiming to be fighters for free expression. The irony!

Well, look at how much of our media is designed around shock value, and it's usually the most vacuous absent of content material you will find.

It usually comes for the extremist sides of whatever matter is at hand, pro or con, like animal rights or the environment or guns or religion, the two sides of an issue become hyperbolic and the expressions of that extremism are often pretty strange.

And they are provocative.

I feel for all the victims, and especially for the victims who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They had nothing to gain by the publication of the rude and mean cartoons, but lost it all.

[Archae]

13. You've said it all.

If Seth Rogen was killed by North Korean agents, people (especially in news media) would be talking him up, saying what a "comedic genius" he is.

[NYC_SKP]

15. Yup. I believe that even Snooki would be hailed as a Hepburn incarnate.

Well, maybe Audrey Hepburn but NOT Kate!

I miss "discussion". You know, where people propose an idea and others consider the ideas and respond as adults, dispassionately, respectfully.

We don't get so much of that on the big issues anymore, it seems.

[arcane1]

20. Those were the days. It's all binary reaction now.

And it's a shame

[Fumesucker]

16. Let the extremists silence the Charlie Hebdos and they'll come for the more moderate critics next

Eventually no one will be able to say a word against Islam in any way.

As Bluenorthwest has noted, if this isn't about religion then the content of the cartoons is completely beside the point.

[swilton]

21. +

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. "Attacked for freely expressing a very harmless minority opinion..." There's no irony in that.

It's the essence of free expression.

As long as the government doesn't choose to get involved in either inhibiting your speech, or supporting it, everything is working as it should.

[LostOne4Ever]

28. You were attacked for victim blaming

[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal] And you are still at it.[/font]

[NYC_SKP]

31. I was attacked for "perceived" victim blaming, people offended by "three innocent victims".

Contextually, the statement was fair, it was something like:

"I am particularly saddened by the deaths of the three innocent victims who had no involvement"

And then a bunch of people swarmed me with "what about the other nine", challenging me to include them among the innocent.

It didn't matter that I qualified my statement and said that "all 12 were innocent of any acts deserving of death", but that wasn't enough.

I'm supposed to change my mind and say that people who chose to publish insulting vulgar cartoons were every bit as innocent as a person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, ha.

No, that's never going to happen because it would be a LIE.

The nine CHOSE to engage in that battle of words, that use of satire and rhetoric toward those targets, and there was a certain amount of assumed risk.

Not so with the three very innocent victims.

[Bluenorthwest]

36. Blaming the victims.

Those who answer words with violence are criminals. The brother of the slain Paris cop says these are crazy people, but you say they were engaged in reasoned reactions to something really offensive. It's clear what you are saying and doing. The brother of one of the dead says the killers were crazy criminals. You do not really agree with that. You think the victims were engaged in a 'war' with honorable people, not with crazy killers.
I agree with the Muslim brother of the Muslim cops who was shot by the crazed criminal. You continue to blame the victims according to the sins you think they committed. All are innocent, but some are more innocent than others. It's depraved thinking.

[NYC_SKP]

37. No, not blaming the victims. They assumed risk, but they did not deserve to die.

Don't try to reason your way around it, and seriously don't put words in my mouth.

They knew there was risk, they chose to take that risk, they died martyrs to their beliefs, they were victims.

Their life choices contributed to their increased risk and they suffered for those choices.

You want to make it a binary black white question, that's safe for you, it doesn't require thinking or describing nuance or making a particularly well described defense.

It's intellectually lazy.

The three bystanders were by far more innocent of acts that led to the killings than the publishers, the targets of the attacks.

It's OK, we can disagree, but one of us (me) is not going to stoop to using insults like "depraved".

You can have that questionable honor.

[Bluenorthwest]

40. You call me intellectually lazy accuse me of playing safe then say you won't use insults.

To say that your rhetoric is lacking in self inspection is to be kind. You are applying degrees of 'innocence' to murder victims.
I think you might want to try applying some of your thinking to other scenarios to see how it feels to you. For example, people are often deeply offended by things that do not offend you. Should any form of art censor itself or feel it is 'at war' with say, racists, white supremacist, because those racists might be 'offended' at the casting of say, Idris Elba as Bond? If some racist did something violent because they were 'offended' at this casting, would you say Idris should have known he was taking part in a war? Because just about anything in print or media offends the living shit out of some small minds out there. Should the militant offense of some shit heads really, really influence what we do in the arts, pop, high, shitty or sublime?
It's not a one size affair, this set of ethics. If your contention is that those who are 'offended' somehow have warrant or reason because they are offended, shut down the presses, close the studios, nothing is safe. Nothing. Silence. No more culture, because someone might be 'offended' and pick up weapons and they have people who try to sell that as somehow the fault of Martin Scorsese and Charlie.
What do you say about the Christians who burned a theater full of people in Paris over Last Temptation of Christ? They were 'offended' at the depiction of their religious figures. Offended. Should Scorsese have known this and not made the film? What about the audience there to watch, some of them burned severely for the Lord's sake? Where do they fall on a metric scale of innocence?
And where do you stop this train? Shut down the presses, close the theaters, unplug the TV.
The rest is silence.

[LostOne4Ever]

38. Let me post links to your comments:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6062598

"Add them to the three innocents who died on Wednesday"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6066386

"Be specific.

Some of the victims of these murders had done nothing to offend anyone, others were engaged in a campaign of satirical attacks against extremism, and others were just doing their jobs.

In some ways, all were innocent.

Indeed, all were innocent of any acts deserving of murder.

All twelve were innocent of acts deserving murder and mayhem. "

[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]You are saying that they were not deserving of murder and mayhem but that is not what you are being accused of.

No one is saying you condone murder, but that you think they brought retribution upon themselves. You even said at one point that they should have considered how their actions would put innocent bystanders in danger.

Not to mention making this thread:



Right after these people were murdered? Do you honestly not see how offensive your remarks are? You don't like their cartoons fine. Don't want to show solidarity with them because of that? Fine. You don't have to.

But a modicum of respect and empathy for the people's families, for those who are hurting, is that so much to ask? You are the one who is going on about respect, civility, and the like in religion. Is it too much to ask for the same from you here?[/font]

"I'm supposed to change my mind and say that people who chose to publish insulting vulgar cartoons were every bit as innocent as a person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, ha.

No, that's never going to happen because it would be a LIE.

The nine CHOSE to engage in that battle of words, that use of satire and rhetoric toward those targets, and there was a certain amount of assumed risk. "

[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]And this is exactly why you are getting a bad response. It is not nuance, or deep thinking. It is the definition of black or white thinking. They did something you didn't like or support so they must be bad people.

Charlie Hebdo was a left wing newspaper. It is very possible that those other victims were right wingers. You have no idea how innocent they were of supporting things you approve of or not, yet you no issue calling them innocent. But refuse to do so for the cartoonist....who were also at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Want to call the cartoons offensive? Go ahead. But do you have to victim blame and vilify? Can't you at least wait till the victim's body's are cold?[/font]

[NYC_SKP]

39. Whatever.

Left wing or right wing, none deserved to die.

But I'm more sad for the bystanders than for the people who chose to act provocatively in the face of danger and in doing so poked the pit bull, so to speak.

Whatever material you have gathered does nothing but prove that what I've been saying is what I've been saying:

I feel more bad for the innocent bystanders.

And the other victims played a role in the violence that met them.

That fact doesn't mean they are not innocent, but it does mean that they are to be held in a different regard.

Now I hope that you'll find something more productive to do than to prove to me that I said what I said.

I already knew that, I'm not going to change how I view these victims and their choices and the consequences.

ciao

[LostOne4Ever]

41. Elapsam Semel Occasionem Non Ipse Potest Iuppiter Reprehendere

[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]Not even Jupiter can retrieve an opportunity once it has passed.[/font]

[Lobo27]

43. So it was the Charlie people who forced the terrorist to pull the trigger?

[NYC_SKP]

44. Yes Lobo27, they went right up to those terrists and forced them to kill twelve peoples!

Why, what else could the poor terroristas do? I mean the Hebdos MADE THEM DO IT!

That is EXACTLY what I said.



You'll do well here, grasshopper!

[Lobo27]

46. What else could they do?

I don't know not kill people in the name of their prophet would be a start?

[NYC_SKP]

47. I don't think they did that.

I don't think they really believe that their religion calls for it.

That's what the MSM want us to think they think, and that might even be a reasonable interpretation of what terrorist spokes-terrorists tell us when they have the mic.

And that's probably what the MIC and war machine want us to think.

But I am unconvinced. I think sometimes they're just suicidal nuts who are tired of living, and other times they're just brainwashed by psychos who use religion to project their agenda.

Don't believe everything the media presents to you as fact.

And don't fall in line with what a bunch of strangers posting on a discussion board lead you to believe is the truth.

Cuz it ain't!

[Lobo27]

50. You may be right, but you also may be wrong.

Its a very thin line. I tend to believe most of the people who do this take their religion to serious, and kill in the name of said religion. But I will give you that there are some that simply want to kill go out on a blaze of glory.

[Dreamer Tatum]

52. Whatever: battle cry of the defeated nt

[NYC_SKP]

53. Yes, the natterers have exhausted me, I am spent, defeated, how could I have been so wrong?

They with the most time to waste on the intertube sometimes win the game of who can go the longest without blinking.

I am done, and I walk away my head hanging in shame.

I have been worn down by a person with more time on their hands and a undying conviction to shame, nay, slaughter a perfect stranger using nothing but their keyboard.

...

[Dreamer Tatum]

54. Here's how you can be so wrong:

You went to pains to say that three of twelve were innocent. This implies that the other nine were not, or at least that you assign some other status to them. Regardless of how you try to finesse it, spin it, massage it, or claim that your thinking is a level of nuanced that we heathens cannot understand, you took special pains to exclude nine manifestly innocent people from your analysis.

How do I know they are innocent? Simple: they are completely innocent of any charge that carries as punishment death by automatic gunfire. Are they not innocent of having bad taste and/or causing dismay? Probably. Your error came when you conveniently downgraded the fact that they were destroyed by automatic gunfire for whatever they did. Later you claimed that, unlike the rest of us simple folk, you seek to "understand" why people do the things they do. Somehow you forget that understanding why someone murders 12 people can proceed simultaneously with condemning them.

Let's suppose a group of religious nutballs decided to kidnap Bill Maher and other celebrities whose careers are characterized by frequent ridicule of Christianity. Let's suppose those people were all put in a room and blown to pieces while some Jethro yells, "God is Great!!! Praise the Lord!!!" Let me take a wild guess guess how nuanced your thought would be then.

[NYC_SKP]

55. Three of the victims were 100% innocent, that is true.

Do you really think I'm going to change my mind.

The others are innocent, too, but they have to own some of the responsibility.

How can they not?

The nine and the three, they are not equally innocent no matter how you try to spin it.

[Dreamer Tatum]

56. How much did Dr Tiller have to own?

With every abortion, he was provoking his murderer. Whoops, I mean, the man who killed him.

Do you have a final count on the innocent/not so innocent breakdown for the Oklahoma City Bombing? I mean, the people who worked in that building were provoking McVeigh. They have to own that, don't they?

I challenge you to show me a whit's difference between those cases and Paris.

[NYC_SKP]

58. Vastly different situations, it's pointless to compare them for these reasons:

Tiller was the only casualty of the shooting, we didn't have Tiller and an unsuspecting passerby both take a bullet.

OKC, everyone in that building was equally innocent, none of them provoked McVeigh.

In other words, there are scores of whit's differences between the cases you name and Paris.

One more whit for ya, Tiller was performing an important public service to women, not drawing stupid vulgar cartoons.

See ya.

[Dreamer Tatum]

59. False. Tiller was performing under the law, as were the French artists.

The situations are entirely the same: you are claiming that people acting lawfully are accountable for being murdered.

I think you know how wrong you are, but you'd sooner mow down 12 innocent people with an AK than admit it.

[NYC_SKP]

60. Did I say that anyone was performing outside the law? No.

That something is legal does not mean that there's no responsibility if doing that legal thing leads to your murder.

I could drive over to some high crime neighborhood and walk around shouting obscenities and vulgar insults and that would be legal.

I could do it night after night and then one day a person come up and beat me to death.

I would bear some responsibility for that beating.

People making stupid vulgar insulting cartoons are nothing like Tiller.

That's a terrible insult to his memory, that is.

[Dreamer Tatum]

62. I'm insulting Tiller, but you're not insulting 9 innocent people?

Excuse me while I laugh at you.

You've made clear that not only do you blame victims, but you entitle yourself to decide who a victim actually is.

If those 9 people have to own their demise, so does Tiller. So do the government employees in the Murrah building.

Your hypothetical also implies that you would blame a woman for her own rape, too.

[fadedrose]

70. ++

[leftynyc]

65. You were attacked?

Did the words hurt as much as the bullets that killed the cartoonists? Or the Jews? You gave your opinion and others gave theirs - obviously disagreeing with you. That's hardly what I'd call an attack in light of the current news.

[Warren Stupidity]

68. NYC_SKP is now playing the victim card, having successfully made the massacre all about him.

Which is pretty much what he did with Sandy Hook as well.

In the future we should just not take the bait.

[leftynyc]

71. Thanks for the heads up

I'll now ignore the whining.

[Warren Stupidity]

67. No you were attacked for blaming the victims of the attack, for stating that they shared some of the

blame for the deaths, for describing some of the victims, those not employed by Charlie Hedbo, as innocent, implying that the other victims were not innocent. You set about demonizing Charlie Hedbo from the very first moments of this event. Your behavior here was appalling.

[arcane1]

11. Careful! Thinking the cartoons are unfunny can make you a terrorist sympathizer around here.

[NYC_SKP]

45. Let's start a club.

It would be a club of common sense and reason.

We could do fondue every Tuesday night, and play games!

[MattSh]

64. It's not just cartoons...

Questioning anything the mainstream media says can make you a terrorist sympathizer.

[swilton]

19. This was certainly the argument being made

by Tariq Ramadan (professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford) on Democracy Now's January 9 interview.

[Blue_In_AK]

22. If they were looking for notoriety,

they succeeded.

[NewDeal_Dem]

24. circulation numbers i've seen were 30,000-45,000. for a paris magazine, it's very small time.

like a literary magazine -- and those are usually subsidized by some rich person.

it published in its initial incarnation 1971-1981, when it had a somewhat different focus (e.g. it was banned by the government for satirizing the death of degaulle, which prompted the name change from L'Hebdo Hara-Kiri to Charlie Hebdo.

The new magazine which started in 1991 has tended to focus on anti-religion and especially anti-islam, and is not above enforcing its political dictats through firing:

In 2000, journalist Mona Chollet was sacked after she had protested against a Philippe Val article which called Palestinians "non-civilized".[8] In 2004, following the death of Gébé, Val succeeded him as director of the publication, while still holding his position as editor.

In 2000 one of their old-time cartoonists was fired by Val for "anti-Semitism".

On 2 July 2008, the designer had published a column in which he criticized the path of Jean Sarkozy. Above all, Sine quip about the possibility of conversion to Judaism of the son of Nicolas Sarkozy before his marriage to the daughter of the founder of the Darty stores. On July 16 , he learned that he was in Charlie Hebdo returned. The publishing director , Philippe Val , justified the end of the collaboration with the argument that about Sine " could be interpreted as making the connection between conversion to Judaism and social success, and it was neither acceptable nor defensible before a court...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo

in comparison, paid circulation for liberation, originally a leftist daily, now a more center left one, is over 100,000. and the big papers/magazines are mostly over 500K circulation.

[Bluenorthwest]

25. Extremist Christians in Paris firebombed a Martin Scorsese film in 1988. The quality of the work

is not really relevant to the fact that violence in response to artistic expression that offends you is criminally insane behavior no matter who does it. Those religious people set fire to human beings over an Oscar nominated film.
This magazine has a weekly circulation around 45,000 and has always used the slogan 'dumb and nasty' adopted from a critical letter from a reader. They have always been in the business of savagely satirizing religion, all of the religions but with Catholicism taking a solid lead and politics. The second incarnation of the magazine has been publishing since 1992 but both incarnations set out to offend everyone and almost always succeeded. I have friends in Paris too, but you can find all of this out on Wikipedia as well. Your friend's take is not very accurate factually.

Also as a gay person, I very much like it when artists mock the fuck out of homophobes who use religion and excuse for every bad action from discrimination to execution of gay people. And I don't really care at all if your religious sensibilities are 'offended' by Last Temptation or some cartoon. Why? The religious world spends many words attacking gay people each and every day. Few straight people or 'good religious people' stand up to them. The fewer who do, the louder those who muster the courage have to be. It is good to offend bigoted fuckers. I hope they are all deeply offended. Because maybe then they will remember their faith's teachings and stop treating others in ways they themselves do not wish to be treated.

[Lobo27]

27. So anytime something bad happens.

We try to blame others, or say some well another group does it too. The point MURDER IS MURDER. Again I don't know what we get by saying the Magazine Sucks? Who cares if it does. The people who worked for it did nothing to deserve murder. So take this crap and shove it.

[Liberal_in_LA]

29. they plan to print onemillion of the next issue

Ten times more than normal

[Archae]

30. These are just my relative's observations.

He doesn't like the magazine, thinks it's simply dumb, and offensive.
It's his opinion.

I've never seen the magazine in question myself.

I don't like humor that goes straight to offensive, like Eddie Murphy's "blue" material or Andrew "Dice" Clay.

Who knows what will happen, like my relative said, maybe after the spike in readership, the numbers will quickly drop back to where they were before.

[NYC_SKP]

32. I'm glad you shared, most of us haven't a clue.

And I agree with you and your relative.

Thanks for posting.

[Bluenorthwest]

33. Is your cousin Bill Donohue of the Catholic League?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014983618

[Nye Bevan]

34. Ummmm, OK. That shouldn't change anyone's views of the murders in the slightest.

I don't care if they had 1 reader and nothing they printed was amusing in the slightest.

[cwydro]

35. That particular news

is well known.

The murderers have probably done more to help that mag than any financial help would have.

[Archae]

49. You're right there.

Sometimes it seems like a movie, a magazine, art, whatever, that is simply mediocre or flat-out boring will go the controversial route, to gain cheap publicity and get more sales.

I watched (or partly watched) "Last Temptation Of Christ," I fell asleep watching the video.
If the fundies and that nun who runs her own network had simply left it alone, it would have bombed totally.
As is, it did bomb pretty much.

Likewise, it sounds like hardly anyone reads this magazine, but the fundy nutcases who made martyrs of the staffers just booted it's readership exponentially.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

51. "The Last Temptation of Christ" was actually a very good movie

based on a very good book. Scorsese got a Best Director nomination for it, and Ebert gave it four stars. I saw it when it came out (in a theatre that was being picketed by fundies) and I thought it was first-rate. It was not a cheap attempt to be controversial; it was a faithful adaptation of a critically-acclaimed (and frequently-banned) novel. It is possible for something to be both controversial and high-quality. Maybe Charlie Hebdo was just controversial. But neither good nor crappy work ever warrants killing people. It doesn't matter whether the writer was intentionally or just incidentally provocative.

[Wgles]

61. I don't understand this post ... seems like you are playing into their hands

As others have pointed out, it really doesn't matter to me whether your friend or anyone found it funny (especially since satire doesn't have to be funny anyway...)

To me what matters is that one group of people has decided that they can censor another group of people's speech with violence, under the guise of being offended; they committed a horrific, murderous act that was intended not only to punish those who did the offending, but also served as a warning to anyone else who would do so in the future. The very thought of this kind of "censorship" should run chills down everyone's spine. This is an attempt to control others through fear, and this group is attempting to control/change our culture of freedom expression.

In my opinion, discussing whether or not this particular magazine was funny/good/bad/etc is playing right into their goal of making us self-censor. i.e. "they should have known better and had the common decency to self-censor."

My question is, why does it matter to you if it was funny or not? I am curious why this is even mentioned.

[Archae]

63. It's just an observation. That's all.

[Wgles]

72. Link

Here is another observation from another French person. I think you might find it another interesting perspective...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/18/1358548/-Why-Americans-Got-Charlie-Hebdo-Wrong?detail=email#

[Denzil_DC]

66. Here's some explanations of the context of some of the cartoons.

I posted part of this post on another thread in response to another DUer, but for those who are genuinely curious, here it is again:

I did find this Quora discussion which may be food for thought:

http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-context-of-Charlie-Hebdos-cartoon-depicting-Boko-Haram-sex-slaves-as-welfare-queens

Here's one person there's explanation of that particular cartoon (the link has some background on others, too):

This cover is mixing two unrelated elements which made the news at about the same time:
- Boko Haram victims likely to end up sex slaves in Nigeria
- Decrease of French welfare allocations

In France, as in probably every country who has welfare allocations, some people criticize this system because some people might try to game it (e.g., "welfare queens" idea). Note that if we didn't had it there would probably be much more people complaining because the ones who really need it would end up in extreme poverty.

Charlie Hebdo is known for being left-wing attached and very controversial, and I think they wanted to parody people who criticize "welfare queens" by taking this point-of-view to the absurd, to show that immigrant women in France are more likely to be victims of patriarchy than evil manipulative profiteers.

And of course if we only stay on the first-degree approach, it's a terrible racist and absurd cover.

Similarly, the "monkey" cartoon is explained like this:

The first clue that all is not what it seems is that the cartoon was drawn by Charb - the editor himself. He was a Communist, and his girlfriend's parents were North African. A funny kind of racist. Next you have to note that the text next to that cartoon says "Rassemblement Bleu Raciste". This is a play on "Rassemblement Bleu Marine", the slogan of Marine Le Pen's national front, and the tricolor flame next to it is the party logo.

So, what you then need to know is that the cartoon was published after a National Front politician Facebooked a photoshop of the woman in the cartoon as a monkey, and then said on French TV that she should be "in a tree swinging from the branches rather than in government".

I've seen other French people elsewhere discussing this who evidently didn't get these references, or if they did, didn't think they were worthwhile, and have a different take on Charlie Hebdo's politics, feeling that they went for shock value in order to boost sales.

My problem with people outside France simply reproducing these particular cartoons as part of "Je suis Charlie Hebdo" - which they're obviously free to do - is that they're removed from their context, which makes them ambiguous - to non-French audiences, probably not even ambiguous, but incomprehensible, if not downright offensive to some, and cheeringly offensive in a non-liberal way to others (like those who love to circulate cartoons of Obama as a monkey, for instance). Again, they're obviously entirely free to do so, but how many understand what they're circulating, and how many who see them understand what they portray?

On the other hand, I don't think there's similar ambiguity about a number of the other cartoons about religious figures or French politicians. They're often scatological or sexually explicit. There's a long tradition of that in satire, not just in France (the British 19th-century cartoonist Rowlandson, among others, is definitely NSFW at times). I also find some of the depictions of Jews and Muslims very stereotyped - which may be part of the joke, but is a bit sophisticated for something that's going to sit on a newsstand and be visible to people who aren't necessarily going to take the time to parse it.

I'm not sure which cover cartoons are being most widely circulated now outside France. It might be interesting to know. It was apparently the ones of Mohammed that the murderers used as their "justification."*

* Since the original post, I've since heard reported on the BBC that another "justification" was the attacks on ISIS.