CHARLIE HEBDO CRANK LETTER

This week, the Philadelphia Daily News published a column by their star blogger, Will Bunch, explaining that he and the paper were sensitively sensitive to people's sensitive sensitivities about religion and blasphemy and such, and thus would not be publishing any content from the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. This was my response.

To the editor:

Will Bunch informs us ("Free to be--and not be--Charlie"), that he and his colleagues at the DN disapprove of the crude humor in Charlie Hebdo, and so will not print the cartoons that led to mass murder in Paris. A month ago, there was perhaps a place for Mr. Bunch's nuanced editorial judgments about what is, and what is not, proper. Now, however, the cartoons are at the heart of the biggest news story in the world and you are a newspaper. How can you not publish them?

In fact, this new-found, finely-tuned aesthetic sensitivity is just a fig leaf, and a transparent one at that. Cowardice is the only reason newspapers around the world, including the Daily News, will not publish this material.

The worst aspect of this is that we already know the harvest Mr. Bunch's attitude will bring. It's what we saw in Paris last week. If the Daily News (and the Inquirer and the New York Times and fifty other papers around the world) had published the Danish Muhammad cartoons after the riots in 2005, the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo might well be alive today. But when the Western press cowered in submission to the threats ten years ago, it only encouraged those who would kill to extinguish basic human freedoms. By refusing to fight back now, you ensure there will be many more Charlie Hebdo's, some large and some small. It will happen again and again. For evil to succeed, all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing.

To paraphrase Hyman Roth in Godfather II, "This is the business you have chosen." Like it or not, Will Bunch, you are in the free speech business, and when the barbarians are at the gate, when cartoonists are being mowed down with automatic weapons, it's a bit late for your delicate sensibilities. If you are a newspaperman, this is the moment you must stand up unequivocally for freedom.

Or not. Perhaps in your case, it's time to run away. Fine. Go. Take that job at the food co-op. Just don't call yourself a journalist anymore.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki