PC thought-bots embarrass themselves with PEN boycott
Brussels march in support of free speech, 2015. Shutterstock/CRM. All rights reserved.PEN, the organization of writers, decided to give a Toni and
James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage award to Charlie
Hebdo — that is, to those of its staff who were not massacred by
the Islamist Kouachi brothers on Jan. 7. So, of course hell broke loose.
In its own words, PEN wished to “honor Charlie Hebdo for their refusal
to retreat when confronted with threats of violence … coupled with their
magnanimity in the face of tragedy.” In a longer statement, the organization declared:
It is the role of the satirists in
any free society to challenge the powerful and the sacred, pushing boundaries
in ways that make expression freer and more robust for us all. In paying the ultimate
price for the exercise of their freedom, and then soldiering on amid
devastating loss, Charlie Hebdo deserves to be recognized for its dauntlessness
in the face of one of the most noxious assaults on expression in recent memory.
On the face of it, the Goodale Award would seem the ideal honor
for Charlie Hebdo.
The idea is to
reward virtue and convey respect. It is not a Pulitzer, National Book Award, or
PEN/Faulkner award for fine writing. It is an award for character.
As PEN said: “Only a handful of people are
willing to put themselves in peril to build a world in which we are all free to
say what we believe.” Their statement does not endorse propositions, or styles,
or theories of the wrongheadedness of Islam or any other religion whose
pronouncements and taboos Charlie Hebdo has, since its inception,
chortled about as it casts enemies into outer darkness.
No, the reward is
not for nuance and certainly not for inoffensiveness. The reward celebrates virtue. In particular, it commends
“refusal to retreat,” “dauntlessness,” and “magnanimity.” Refusal to retreat
means insistence on defying what some have called the assassin’s veto.
Dauntlessness means continuing to publish after a firebombing of their
headquarters in 2011, and then again
after this year’s mass murders. Dauntlessness merged with magnanimity when Charlie launched its post-massacre
career with a touching cover portrayal of Mohammad shedding a tear, saying, “All is
forgiven,” as he holds up a sign declaring “I am Charlie.”
No stranger to dauntlessness, James Goodale himself was the Times chief lawyer who, in 1971,
convinced publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger to publish the Pentagon Papers. When
the Nixon administration went to the Supreme Court seeking to restrain the Times from proceeding, Goodale headed
the legal team that won the case, which has a marvelous title: New York Times Co. v. United States.
Talk about courage, talk about freedom of expression.
But these days,
darts are flying. A letter of dissociation signed by a good number of
well-known writers, including Russell Banks, Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Deborah
Eisenberg, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose,
and Wallace Shawn, declares that
there is a critical difference
between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and
enthusiastically rewarding such expression.
In the aftermath of the attacks,
Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were characterized as satire and “equal opportunity
offense,” and the magazine seems to be entirely sincere in its anarchic
expressions of disdain toward organized religion. But in an unequal society,
equal opportunity offense does not have an equal effect.
Power and prestige are elements
that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including
satire. The inequities between the person holding the pen and the subject fixed
on paper by that pen cannot, and must not, be ignored.
To the section of the French
population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized, a
population that is shaped by the legacy of France’s various colonial
enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims, Charlie
Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further
humiliation and suffering.
One wonders how the signatories know that the Mohammad cartoons
are “intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.” Intended?
Might they not be intended, rather, to challenge an interpretation of Islam
that bans depictions of the Prophet, and thereby to offer Muslims (or anyone
else) an opportunity to rethink what their faith requires of them? As PEN
plausibly said,
were the Hebdo cartoonists not
satirical in their genesis and intent, their content and images might offend
most or all of us. But, based on their own statements, we believe that Charlie
Hebdo’s intent was not to ostracize or insult Muslims, but rather
to reject forcefully the efforts of a small minority of radical extremists to
place broad categories of speech off limits—no matter the purpose, intent, or
import of the expression.
In fact, the head of
France’s premier anti-racist organization, SOS-Racisme says: “Charlie Hebdo
is the greatest anti-racist weekly in the country,” and goes on to call it
“scandalous … an insult to the memory and the struggle of the people we have
lost,” which led no less an expert on willful misreading than Salman Rushdie to tweet: “Now that the
leading anti-racist group SOS-Racisme has called CH ‘the greatest anti-racist
weekly’, will PEN protestors admit their error?”
As for the claim of
satire’s effects, how do the signatories of the letter know what they are or
have been or will be? The literature on “mass communications effects” is vast,
tangled, and contradictory. There are short-term effects, mid-term effects, and
long-term effects. The publication of the Pentagon Papers affected Daniel
Ellsberg, who released them to the Times and other papers, in one way, and
Richard Nixon in another way. There are different effects on different folks.
In the eighth century CE, Byzantine Christians practiced
iconoclasm. Christians got over it. Perhaps Muslims will do the
equivalent some day, and thank Charlie Hebdo.
But for now,
offensiveness is Charlie Hebdo’s métier. The magazine has long been
savage and impious, in the Rabelaisian tradition. Sometimes it is, to my
taste, puerile. Sometimes it makes me queasy. So what? Satirical
magazines aren’t tranquillizers. The magazine scathes dogmatists and haters. Some French speakers tell us that the charge of racism
misreads cartoons that are, in fact, intended to mock racists. (In
the spirit of the PEN protest, one might even claim that these are “intended”
misreadings.) The immigrant-hating Le Pen dynasty incurs Charlie’s particular wrath. Nor has Charlie sucked up, as it were, to Catholic
cardinals, who it depicted once as forming a buggering circle, or to Jesus,
whom it has depicted buggering God, and in turn being buggered by the Holy
Spirit. (For examples, click here.)
Humor is famously parochial. After living in Paris for one year
of my life, I can’t claim to have mastered the inflections of French satire. A
lot of it doesn’t translate, at least not transparently. I understand why some
find some of its depictions racist, even as I understand why some people (not
only African-American) condemn Huckleberry Finn for its use of the word
“nigger,” but to understand a culturally clueless error is not to be
convinced.
Moreover, it may look commendable that the protest letter
attempts a general argument, but it’s a general argument that doesn’t hold up.
If equality of power and prestige are to be held out as qualifications for
legitimate satire, who issues the certificates, and on what grounds? When
Muslims, or Catholics, or Jews disagree, who gets veto privileges? After all,
some victims are also victimizers. Victimization comes in more flavors than Ben
& Jerry’s. How many jurors must decide who qualifies as a victim in one
case or the other? Must the criterion be “beyond a reasonable doubt” or “preponderance
of evidence”? Must all satirical cartoons be held in pretrial detention?
Congratulations to PEN for the courage to honor courage.
This article is reprinted
from Tablet Magazine, at tabletmag.com,
the online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.