Tenminste 3 zeer relevante punten voor de nu zo populaire opiniepolitie: 1. In his response to the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the cartoonist Joe Sacco makes the distinction between the right to free expression and the sensible use of it. One might be free, he says, to draw—as he does to illustrate—a black man falling out of a tree with a banana in his hand, or a Jew counting money over the entrails of the working class, but of what possible use are these images? And actually of course we’re not free. 2. Crucial to satire is the appeal to supposed common sense and a shared moral code. The satirist presents a situation in such a way that it appears grotesque and the reader who, whatever his or her private interests, shares the same cultural background and moral education agrees that it is so. [...] It is said, by contrast, that Christian leaders have now grown used to their religion being desecrated and pilloried in every way. This is not entirely the case. In 2011 Charlie Hebdo noted that while Muslims had sued the paper only once, the Catholic Church had launched thirteen cases against it. 3. The following questions arise: Now that the whole world is my neighbor, my immediate Internet neighbor, do I make any concessions at all, or do I uphold the ancient tradition of satire at all costs? And again, is a culture that takes mortal offense when an image it holds sacred is mocked a second-rate culture that needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, my twenty-first-century that is? Do I have the moral authority to decide this?
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 22:56:09 +0000
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