authors have criticized the writers’ organization PEN for honoring
Charlie Hebdo’s commitment to freedom of expression. The French
satirical magazine had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, an
unforgivable insult in the eyes of the Kouachi brothers, who burst into
its offices and shot eight of its staff, as well as four other people,

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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.

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The imagination sees and draws and describes many
things—pornographic, erotic, satiric, and blasphemous—that are
uncomfortable or ugly. But they are not actually happening. The
imagination is a place where hypotheses and conditionals rule, and