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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Words, words, words, words, words

January 7, 2015 by Terry Teachout

Charlie Hebdo censorshipToday has been an orgy of self-righteousness and pusillanimity. Tomorrow will be no different. To be sure, there is no shortage of those who claim to “be Charlie” and “stand with Charlie,” but there has long been a shortage—in France, I fear, a fatal one—of those who are prepared to do anything more than affect to support the cause of freedom. As for the rest of Europe, now we will learn what is left of its soul.

For my part, I can do no more than reprint the cartoons that appear below, which were originally printed on the cover of Charlie Hebdo. The New York Daily News and the Daily Telegraph declined to do as much. When they ran photographs of the magazine in their online news coverage, they pixelated the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad for which the staff of Charlie Hebdo was exterminated. In addition, the Associated Press is refusing to distribute images that contain such caricatures. Would that it didn’t need to be said, but it does: a newspaper that doesn’t believe in freedom of speech believes in nothing—not even itself.

May these acts of cowardice be forever remembered in the annals of journalism.

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UPDATE: I am proud to report that the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is reprinting the above cartoon in Thursday’s editions.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (the news side, not the editorial page) have decided not to reprint or telecast images of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that led to the attack.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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