On Friday, I wrote a short blog post about cartoonist Gary Trudeau, who in the process of receiving a George Polk journalism award, said the murdered cartoonists at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo “wandered into the realm of hate speech” and that “free speech…… becomes its own kind of fanaticism.” I encourage you to read my short post in full, but I was appalled by Trudeau’s remarks and said they were the “free speech equivalent of suggesting [Charlie Hebdo cartoonists] had it coming because they were wearing short skirts.”
Well, anyway, the man who runs the George Polk awards didn’t much like what I had to say. He sent the following letter, which is reproduced in full below:
Sandwiched between a factual error in the first sentence and a factual error in the last sentence, the rant by Mark Hemingway about Garry Trudeau’s remarks on the Charlie Hebdo slaughter shows the pitfall in commenting on something without having read it or heard it. Writing on the basis of a single tweet, which praised Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Hemingway grievously misrepresented the cartoonist’s position. In a well-reasoned, thought-provoking discourse on the nature of satire, Mr. Trudeau said that true satire “punches up,” not down, attacking those in authority and power, not those at the bottom of society. By going after “a powerless, disenfranchised minority,” Charlie Hebdo abandoned genuine satire, embraced provocation for its own sake and “wandered into the realm of hate speech.” As a result, it fed the flames of violence and caused Muslims throughout France to rally around the extremists. As any reasonable person can see, this is a far cry from simply characterizing the slain Charlie Hebdo cartoonists as “hate-spewing fanatics.”
Mr. Trudeau also pointed out that freedom of speech brings responsibilities. “What free speech absolutions have failed to acknowledge is that because one has the right to offend a group does not mean that one must.” Granted, this is a nuanced position that can elude a bent-for-hell headline grabber.
And the factual errors? Mr. Hemingway began by saying that Mr. Trudeau was the first cartoonist to ever receive a George Polk Award. In fact, he was the fifth, following Jules Feiffer, David Levine, Jeff MacNelly and Edward Sorel. (He was the first to receive the Career Achievement Award). And Mr. Hemingway ended by saying that Mr. Trudeau’s remarks were made during a panel discussion; in fact, they were delivered during his acceptance speech. The errors of fact pale in comparison with the error of interpretation.
John Darnton, Curator, George Polk Awards
First, let me address the errors. I will own up to having wrongly said that Trudeau was the first cartoonist to win a Polk award. What I will say in my defense is that the error did not orginate with me. The Daily Beast, where I first read about Trudeau’s remarks, reported that “Trudeau is the first cartoonist to ever receive a Polk award.”
As for the second supposed error, Darnton is isn’t reading very closely. Here’s what happened. I initially wrote late Friday afternoon that Trudeau’s remarks were made during his acceptance speech, which Darnton confirms is correct. Saturday morning I got an email from a reader saying that they thought Trudeau may have made his remarks during a panel and linked to a report saying, “Trudeau, of Doonesbury fame, will join Jules Feiffer, a cartoonist cited for his work in 1961, and Django Gold, senior writer for The Onion, in a discussion about the role and impact of comics and satire in journalism after the attacks by Islamic extremists last month on the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store that left 20 people dead, including the gunmen.” Because I couldn’t confirm the setting of Trudeau’s remarks, I amended the article, and added a note at the end saying, “I earlier said Trudeau made his remarks during his acceptance speech, but it looks like they may have been given during a related panel discussion.” I never said Trudeau’s remarks were definitively made during a panel discussion, I said they “may have been” made during some sort of panel discussion. I was confronted with the fact I didn’t know the exact context in which his remarks were made, and was admitting as much. Further, getting ahold of someone on Saturday morning seemed unnecessary to nail down an unimportant detail that was irrelevant to the clear substance of his comments. Admitting you don’t know something is quite not at all the same as making an error. I did the former, not the latter, and Mr. Darnton doesn’t seem to know the difference.
And while we’re correcting the record, let me just note that Darnton says I was “writing on the basis of a single tweet.” First, Mr. Darnton can’t presume to know how many sources informed my writing. Second, in point of fact, there were two tweets in the piece from people hearing Trudeau’s remarks, one linked to, another embedded in the middle of the post. If Mr. Darnton wants to be pointlessly pedantic, I kindly request he get his own damn facts straight.
The good news is that Mr. Darnton and I agree that these matters “pale in comparison with the error of interpretation.” So let me be perfectly clear that Darnton is the one guilty of erroneously interpreting Trudeau’s remarks. I can only thank him for writing this letter, which both clearly and obliviously reinforces everything I had to say in the first place. Indeed, the notion that it is hateful to satirize people that hold undemocratic beliefs — up to and including the belief it’s justified to massacre the staff of a newspaper you think is guilty of blasphemy — just because the people that hold such intolerant beliefs are labeled “a powerless, disenfranchised minority” is dangerous nonsense.
The folks at Charlie Hebdo had been attacked and threatened with violence long before their newsroom became a slaughterhouse, and when you have the means and will to carry out mass executions of people you don’t agree with — you’re anything but powerless. There’s nice literary irony to accusing Charlie Hebdo of “punching down” when they were shot and killed in response. And I do love how Darnton helpfully parses Trudeau’s remarks by offering up the galling suggestion that Charlie Hebdo is to be blamed for its own massacre. After all, by not showing restraint in what they published they “fed the flames of violence and caused Muslims throughout France to rally around the extremists.” Of course, Charlie Hebdo routinely drew blasphemous and obscene cartoons making fun of Jesus and the Pope. Yet, there was never a serious worry that bunch of Catholics would storm their newsroom and shoot them all. The suggestion that “Muslims throughout France” should be expected to rally around extremists who want to kill anyone who draws a cartoon mocking their faith is patronizing at best, racist at worst.
Additionally, I would note that Mr. Darnton calls me “a bent-for-hell headline grabber.” I don’t really care that this is ad hominem, so much as I find the basis for the statement mystifying. The headline Mr. Darnton is responding to is “Gary Trudeau Calls Charlie Hebdo ‘Hate Speech.'” That is literal, straightforward, and newsworthy — even though I was clearly offering opinion. Darnton suggests I am missing some nuance here, but my position all along has been Trudeau is the one who’s trying to obfuscate bright moral lines. Further, Trudeau’s use of the phrase “hate speech” carries a lot of cultural and legal baggage and his other remark comparing free speech advocates to fanatics (again, in the context of illiberal terrorists shooting up newsroom!) were sure to generate controversy.
To make the specific remarks that Trudeau did and then insist it’s his critics that are lacking nuance is, well, it’s exactly the kind of obtuse response I would expect from our media betters, as I’ve had pretty dispiriting run-ins with them when it comes to asking media organizations to stand up for free speech. And after all, these are the same prestigious George Polk Awards that gave an award for campaign reporting in 2012 to Mother Jones’s David Corn, whose major achievement was publicizing a Democratic party oposition research video taken in secret that captured the Republican candidate using a single statistic in unflattering fashion. If the people running the George Polk awards want to plead for nuance and context to defend Trudeau’s remarks, please excuse me while I reach for an airsickness bag.
Still, if Mr. Darnton wants to “a bent-for-hell headline grabber,” his own words have given me ample reason to confirm the suspicion. And so I refer him to the headline above, and I stand by every last word of it.
