Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, also known as Charb, in
September 2012. Charb was killed in the January 2015 terror attack on
the satirical French weekly. Photo: AP Photo

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If there is any group of people on the planet who should feel
solidarity with the slain editors of the French satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo, it is writers.

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As short-story writer Deborah Eisenberg argued in a long letter to the
executive director of PEN, satirizing Catholicism is fine because it
“has represented centuries of authoritarian repressiveness and the
abuse of power.”

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This is a version of Garry Trudeau’s argument that Charlie Hebdo was
“punching downward” against the defenseless, when satire should punch
up against the powerful.