Recently the Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau criticized Charlie Hebdo’s anti-Islamic cartoons. He accused the magazine of using satire to “punch down” — that is, of abusing one’s own position of safety and privilege in order to harass the “disenfranchised”.
The blogger and columnist Daniel Greenfield has offered a tart response. Excerpt:
The left has adopted “Punching up’ and “Punching down’ as the legitimate metrics for comedy and satire, but real ”˜Punching down’ comes from the establishment. When an establishment satirist like Trudeau attacks satirists who risked their lives challenging a real authority with the power to kill them, what he is really saying is that satire should only serve the ends and agendas of the establishment.
That is the very definition of “Punching down’. When the establishment tells you what satire is supposed to be, then anyone following those rules is punching down.
…There is in fact an easy way to tell whether your satire is really punching up or down. Try it and see what happens. If you run into a gigantic backlash that impacts your career and your safety, then you’re actually punching up. Just ask a rodeo clown out of Missouri who went out wearing an Obama mask and ended having to go into hiding while the Governor, a Senator and the Kansas City Star called for his head. Bans were issued, blacklists were assembled and Obama fans threatened to burn down his house.
That’s what real “Punching up’ looks like.
Or, as Voltaire said:
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Read the whole thing here.
7 Comments
A creeping fascism
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2015/04/video-of-day.html
Of course the real question is, why is anyone paying attention to what Gary Trudeau thinks anyway. A washed-up has-been who never could draw, and who hasn’t put out a funny cartoon since Cambodia fell is now going to lecture us on press ethics? What’s next? Dave Barry’s views on Ukraine?
For God’s sake…
JK, interesting link. I saw over on Libertybelle’s blog last week, I believe, a suggestion by Mark Steyn that this uproar over bakers etc was contrived agitprop and only select businesses were targeted. Mark wrote that no Muslim bakery or florist etc would be targeted. For that matter, I believe no black run business will be sought out either. Only white Christian. Maybe even Jewish Temples.
Prediction…before long, these brown shirt “activists” will be entering mainline Christian churches during Sunday Services to do their “social justice” bit. Or, they will be seated in the congregation and do like they do in certain Congressional hearings.
I think … make that, I’m inclined to think Whitewall, your ‘Prediction’ is very likely to turn out correct.
I derive as the basis for regarding your Prediction True – just a cursory read of what’s posted on homo stuff generally (6 of 10 items) here.
http://www.scotusblog.com/
Do Whitewall, take a fuller gander at this though
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/04/the-jujitsu-of-same-sex-marriage
JK, some jujitsu there. As is the habit with the Left, it isn’t what they appear to be selling on the retail level within attractive storefront displays…it is always what is in the back room with the “private do not enter” sign keeping prying eyes out. The motives in that room are much deeper and destructive than what the useful idiot “rent a red” agitators are busy agitating in public about. Incrementalism.