Charlie Hebdo: Still Alive, Kicking And Insolent

January 16, 2015 10:04 pmby YEN MAKABENTA

The news from Paris continues to shock and awe.

Despite losing 12 staffers to murder and terrorism, Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper,
has survived to publish another day. Now its latest issue is on its way to the book of records
with a print run of three million copies, and two million more to follow. European newspapers
have reproduced its cartoons as a gesture of solidarity.
When the issue came out on Wednesday (January14), buyers lines snaked for blocks as
Parisians clamored for copies that sold out within minutes. Outside of France, demand for
copies was equally huge, and will likely stay up until finally supplied.
Surviving staff members of the weekly worked day and night after the Jan. 7 attack to ensure
that the issue would come out on time. With their offices still roped off as a crime scene, the
staff worked out of a conference room at the left-wing daily Libration.
The issue did not disappoint; it had plenty to stir controversy. The 16-page edition brimmed
with the sort of irreverent, off-color humor that made Charlie famous and infamous. No one is
spared ridicule. Not Pope Francis, who is now in Manila; not German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, not French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. There are nuns, priests, rabbis and imams
sprinkled in its pages.
In one cartoon, two hooded terrorists are pictured in heaven, with one asking the other,
Where are the virgins?
Theyre with the Charlie staff, loser, his accomplice replies.
Another cartoon pictures a harried and exhausted cartoonist hunched over his desk, with a
caption that reads, Cartooning at Charlie Hebdo, its 25 years of work. The next panel
shows hooded gunmen mowing people down with a Kalashnikov, accompanied by the
words, For a terrorist, its 25 seconds of work.
The conclusion: Terrorism: A job for lazy people.
Mother of all ironies

Atrocity is a horrible way to increase circulation, and I do not recommend it to the Manila
Times as a strategy for recapturing its old pedestal as the Philippines No.1 daily newspaper.
Heres the mother of all ironies.
The Islamic terrorists clearly meant to kill the paper by killing 12 of its staff members,
including its editor. Instead it has propelled Charlie Hebdos circulation from 65,000 copies
weekly to the stratosphere today. It will not lack of financing and advertising support from
here on.
Hebdo will sire many copycats, which will strive to be as irreverent and impertinent. Which
means that religious zealots will have more satirists to worry about.
This tragedy has given the profession of cartooning a big boost. More young people will
henceforth take up fine arts in college. Cartooning could produce its own Michelangelo and
Picasso.
With Charlie Hebdo, the goal is always to provoke, to stir debate and to make people laugh.
Now, satirists may not be content with laughter. They may turn their sights on creative
destruction.
The triumph of print
Heres another great irony.
Before this tragedy, people were blithely saying that the day of print media is over. That
newspapers like the Times will become extinct. That the Internet and social media, like
terrorists, will kill everything in sight. That TV is supreme.
But then comes this irony.
With Charlie Hebdo, we are seeing the triumph of the press and the resurrection of print to
frontline status.
People everywhere are jostling to get a physical copy of Charlie Hebdo. Theyre not looking
for the cartoons to be merely flashed on TV or replicated in social media in truncated form.
They want the real thing.

If newspaper and magazine publishers have been totally demoralized by broadcast and
social media, now is the time to rethink creatively their mission and their service to readers.
The truth is when we speak of the press, were really talking of print media. Broadcast media
and social media have been piggybacking only on the heroism of print.
The time is coming when advertisers will realize where real journalism lives, and that they
have been backing the wrong horse.
Pope Francis on free expression
Despite his busy schedule in the Philippines, Pope Francis has managed to insert a few
words of comment on the Charlie Hebdo affair. He did so during his flight from Sri Lanka to
Manila.
His holiness declared that there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults
or ridicules someones faith.
He dutifully defended free speech as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak
ones mind for the sake of the common good.
But he emphasized that there are limits.
Many people around the world have defended the right of Charlie Hebdo to publish
inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in the wake of the attacks by Islamic
extremists in Paris.
The Vatican and four prominent French imams issued a joint declaration that denounced the
attacks but also urged the media to treat religions with respect.
Francis went a step further by saying that limits must be recognized when freedom of
expression meets freedom of religion.
He said that it is an aberration to kill in the name of God and religion can never be used to
justify violence.
As for potential threats to his person, in the wake of the Paris attacks, Pope Francis said he
was concerned primarily for the faithful. He explained: I am worried, but you know I have a
defect: a good dose of carelessness. Im careless about these things, he said.

But he admitted that in his prayers, he had asked that if something were to happen to him
that it doesnt hurt, because Im not very courageous when it comes to pain. Im very timid.
He added, Im in Gods hands.