In any war, the goal is to put your enemy in a position where he has no
good options. The murderous attack on the offices of the French
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo does exactly that. Consider the
response from the Western media with regard to the Mohammed cartoons.



offensive.

For instance, I think most satire of Christianity is particularly
cowardly and lame precisely because Christians are such a safe target.
Also, after centuries of tolerance for satire of Christianity,
opportunities for cleverness or originality are few and far between.



slaughter in Paris only makes that more of a reality.

Whereas last week, running satirical pictures of Mohammed largely made
sense only as a matter of opinion journalism, it is now a requirement
of news reporting — because those images are central to the story.


to have it both ways, running a photo of Charbonnier while pixelating
the issue of Charlie Hebdo he was holding so that readers couldn’t make
out the satirical image of Mohammed.

This “compromise” was worse than refusing to run the cartoon at all