I support freedom of speech but didn't buy Charlie Hebdo today
I tried to get it but failed.
I checked the newspapers kiosk in my neighborhood near the subway station, this morning on my way to work, but I couldn't queue for 15-20 minutes so I gave up...and when I left the underground and asked for the issue at another stand, near the highschool, 10 minutes later, it was already sold out there. The newspaper vendor told me he had never seen so many people queueing at 7 am, and couldn't actually answer the demand.
So, I bought the new issue of Le Canard Enchainé instead, which was devoted to what happened to their fellow journalists at Charlie's, and especially to Cabu because he also drew for that newspaper. Many of the cartoonists from Charlie also worked as free-lancers for other newspapers. Le Canard is another satirical newspaper, with less cartoons and more columns, and the editorial line is less "free". Charlie loves its dark humour*and smut, while Le Canard draws the line there: no cartoons about death and no smut.
I will try again to get the new issue of Charlie Hebdo tomorrow morning.From what I saw and read, I expect to be a bit disappointed -- the cover with a crying Mohammad holding a "JeSuisCharlie" sign under the title "everything is forgiven" is quite "soft", and I hoped for the march to be more satirized --, but I guess that the survivors are all still in shock and grieving so it must have not been easy to "go back to work".
Anyway, it's the same problem everywhere, too many buyers, not enough copies, so they are actually doing a wide circulation with 5 millions copies!
To think that CH usually printed about 50,000 copies every week (and some didn't sell). I wonder how long the "new readers" will keep buying it...
Of course some people are already selling copies on ebay for hundreds of euros. Are they the same people who sold the previous issue on ebay for thousands of euros, last week just after the attack?
The world we live in.
*Oh btw, you might not know where the name Charlie comes from. Actually I'm pretty sure that most people who are buying it these days are clueless about it. CH was born from the ashes of another satirical newspaper called Hara-Kiri. Wolinski or Cabu already worked there. Hara-Kiri went bankrupt because it kept being sued, and its last issue's cover was about Charles de Gaulle's death in Colombey-Les-Deux-Eglises in 1970:
("Tragic ball in Colombey: 1 death"). That title refered both to De Gaulle's death and to a tragedy that had killed 146 people in a fire at a discothèque (hence the "ball"), downplaying the death of an old leader in comparison to the loss of so many young people. Pompidou's governement considered it an offence of lèse-majesté (see here the residual sign from monarchy)! Even though we "celebrate" free speech today, censorship still existed in 1970 and Hara-Kiri was banned. But it was brought back as Charlie Hebdo!
So actually Charlie is a wink at De Gaulle himself, it's a pied-de-nez to someone who embodied everything those guys were against, especially censorship, in the spirit of May 68.
I checked the newspapers kiosk in my neighborhood near the subway station, this morning on my way to work, but I couldn't queue for 15-20 minutes so I gave up...and when I left the underground and asked for the issue at another stand, near the highschool, 10 minutes later, it was already sold out there. The newspaper vendor told me he had never seen so many people queueing at 7 am, and couldn't actually answer the demand.
So, I bought the new issue of Le Canard Enchainé instead, which was devoted to what happened to their fellow journalists at Charlie's, and especially to Cabu because he also drew for that newspaper. Many of the cartoonists from Charlie also worked as free-lancers for other newspapers. Le Canard is another satirical newspaper, with less cartoons and more columns, and the editorial line is less "free". Charlie loves its dark humour*and smut, while Le Canard draws the line there: no cartoons about death and no smut.
I will try again to get the new issue of Charlie Hebdo tomorrow morning.From what I saw and read, I expect to be a bit disappointed -- the cover with a crying Mohammad holding a "JeSuisCharlie" sign under the title "everything is forgiven" is quite "soft", and I hoped for the march to be more satirized --, but I guess that the survivors are all still in shock and grieving so it must have not been easy to "go back to work".
Anyway, it's the same problem everywhere, too many buyers, not enough copies, so they are actually doing a wide circulation with 5 millions copies!
To think that CH usually printed about 50,000 copies every week (and some didn't sell). I wonder how long the "new readers" will keep buying it...
Of course some people are already selling copies on ebay for hundreds of euros. Are they the same people who sold the previous issue on ebay for thousands of euros, last week just after the attack?
The world we live in.
*Oh btw, you might not know where the name Charlie comes from. Actually I'm pretty sure that most people who are buying it these days are clueless about it. CH was born from the ashes of another satirical newspaper called Hara-Kiri. Wolinski or Cabu already worked there. Hara-Kiri went bankrupt because it kept being sued, and its last issue's cover was about Charles de Gaulle's death in Colombey-Les-Deux-Eglises in 1970:
("Tragic ball in Colombey: 1 death"). That title refered both to De Gaulle's death and to a tragedy that had killed 146 people in a fire at a discothèque (hence the "ball"), downplaying the death of an old leader in comparison to the loss of so many young people. Pompidou's governement considered it an offence of lèse-majesté (see here the residual sign from monarchy)! Even though we "celebrate" free speech today, censorship still existed in 1970 and Hara-Kiri was banned. But it was brought back as Charlie Hebdo!
So actually Charlie is a wink at De Gaulle himself, it's a pied-de-nez to someone who embodied everything those guys were against, especially censorship, in the spirit of May 68.