NCS Charlie Hebdo Gallery

For those of you who might be getting tired of all these posts pertaining to the Charlie Hebdo massacre last week, you’ll be relieved to know this will be my last one. This really did rock the cartooning community, and not just political cartoonists.

The National Cartoonists Society made a call to all members (although they welcomed non-member pro submissions) to speak their minds and show support over this terrible event in the best way we know how… through cartoons. There is now an awesome gallery of these cartoons, 130 at last count, up on the NCS website. My contribution is above.

One last thing. I have been one who has gone to great pains to point out that, while I support and am willing to fight for the right to free speech, I do not necessarily agree with how other use that right. In other words, I believe in the philosophy stated in this famous quote by Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often wrongly attributed to Voltaire):

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.

Having been exposed only to a few of the cartoons done by the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists I, like many others, found many of them to be racist, inflammatory, and seemingly pointless. While some may still be, I’d urge you to read this article before completely passing judgement. The author explains that many of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons people object to might seem racist and overly inflammatory, they are in fact satirizing the racism of other publications, organizations and pundits. My analogy for Americans would be if someone unfamiliar with parody and satire watched an episode of “All in the Family”, they may well think it’s a racist show after listening to Archie Bunker’s bigoted talk, but it is in fact lampooning bigots. I guess if anything good come out of this, it could be a greater awareness for Americans about cartooning outside our borders.