A Website of the Radical Imagination
Writers and cartoonists who refuse to honor Charlie Hebdo aren’t thinking straight. Yet I don’t hate their impulse to distance themselves from those who are down with gratuitous humiliation of Muslims in France or anywhere else. That impulse feels homey to me in part because my wife is a practicing Muslim. Perhaps those of us … Read more
—If Smoler is to be criticized for anything, it is for an excess of kindliness… —The ‘punching down’ meme was heard immediately after the Charlie Hebdo killings, but it was not very prominent. More common then were variations on the themes of insensitivity and offensiveness. What’s changed? To call the dead insensitive and offensive served … Read more
In 2006 Charlie Hebdo republished the Jyllands-Posten cartoons (as did First of the Month), and were sued by three Muslim organizations. This attempted use of the courts to punish speech did not provoke any memorable censure by the people who have recently protested PEN’s decision to honor the courage of the journalists who worked (and … Read more
When last we spoke… One squireen was eulogizing yet another one [[http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2014/06/lineages_of_the.html]. The still living one, Perry Anderson, found hope in the existence of a newish magazine, Jacobin. It’s been said before: hope that is seen is not hope. So: to the moment. Jacobin wasted no time posting a comment on this week’s killings in … Read more
A few months before her death, Ellen Willis emailed to say pieces by Charles O’Brien and Fredric Smoler on the Danish Cartoon Controversy posted on this site were “good.” (That was high praise from Ellen whose mode of approbation was the opposite of American idolaters.) Struck by how much those pieces “echoed themes” in what she’d … Read more
I’m going to begin with an olive branch: not all of Sunday’s “Unity March” in Paris was a proto-fascist omen (Marine Le Pen and her National Front goons were, after all, cheerleading and hurling scatological slogans from the sidelines, which is a lot like when coaches of certain national soccer teams keep their divas or … Read more
A few weeks ago Michael Berube emailed me evidence I’d made a mistake in my foreword to First of the Year: 2010. I’d brought up an unflattering story about Paul Berman that Berube had touched on in his book, The Left at War, and I’d asserted (in a parenthesis) Berube had been unaware Berman had … Read more