In the last few days, I have been reading a number of posts here expounding the view that CHARLIE-HEBDO is or was racist, or published racist cartoons, with various degrees of nuance or lack thereof.
In response, some have posted excellent diaries trying to dispel what is obviously due to cultural misunderstandings, and/or placing things in their cultural and legal context. Or trying to explain the humor, which is very hard to do.
While I haven't kept a running tally, I think there is still a distressing (to me) number of people here who, as the saying goes, "don't get it."
I'm not going to approach this issue from a rational, well argued standpoint; as I said, others have already done it, and better than I could. I'm going at this from a purely personal and emotional standpoint.
Some of you here know me from my diaries; I'm user ID 849 and I've been on DKos since 2003, so I hope you will bear with me and follow me below the orange croissant...
First, I should introduce myself, because if you're going to give any credit to what I'm going to say, you should first know who I am.
I am a dual citizen, French-American, born in France, in 1954, with a Law Degree from the Sorbonne; I left France in my early 20ies and spent all my professional life in Los Angeles. My wife is also a dual-citizen, born in Philadelphia in a Jewish family. In 2005, we decided to leave the USA and live in modest semi-retirement in a small village in the South of France. (I posted some diaries about our experience at the time.)
I have a personal connection to this issue. As some of you know, before CHARLIE-HEBDO was called that, it was called HARA-KIRI HEBDO, which started as a magazine in the early 1960s. Amongst the founding artists of that magazine was French artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud, who lived in Los Angeles from 1984 to the mid-1990s. During that time, I was his business partner and friend.
Separately, I was also amongst the folks who, in 1974, helped launch FLUIDE GLACIAL, cartoonist Marcel Gotlib's humor magazine, which sprang from an earlier magazine called L'ECHO DES SAVANES. Both Gotlib and Fluide's now-retired founder Jacques Diamant are dear friends of ours.
The artists of all these magazines -- Moebius, Gotlib, Cabu, Reiser, Gébé, etc -- also contributed to PILOTE, yet another French comics magazine, which had its heyday in the 1970s, but no longer exists today.
There was and is a fair amount of of crossover amongst the HARA-KIRI / PILOTE / L'ECHO / FLUIDE / CHARLIE crowd. So I've known some of the CHARLIE people through my own connections with Gotlib, Diamant and Moebius. And this is where it gets personal.
Listen to me if you listen to no one else: THESE PEOPLE WERE NOT RACISTS!!!
When you call them, or their works, racist, to me, you sound just like the folks on Fox who claim Obama is a secret muslim or marxist!
You don't have to like the work of the CHARLIE artists -- many in France didn't. It often was idiotic or sophomoric, just as much as some stuff on the NATIONAL LAMPOON was in its 1970s glory days. (And I also knew the publisher of that mag and HEAVY METAL.)
You don't have to understand it and you certainly don't have to support it. CHARLIE used to sell at best 30,000 copies; I'm pretty sure the 7 million Frenchmen and women who bought the new issue are not supporters of the magazine in and of itself, but do you think they would genuinely come out and grieve for these artists if they truly thought they were racists?
(A real racist islamophobic demonstration in Montpellier last week-end drew barely 100 people, against 300 who came out against it.)
You didn't know these people; I did. So please stop insulting them by calling them "racists" when it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about.
PS: In a spirit of enlightenment, I submit here a classic 1973 cartoon story by my friend Marcel Gotlib published in FLUIDE GLACIAL; it is entitled God's Club