Checking Charlie Hebdo’s Privilege (Douthat, NYT)

[Jim__]

38. Trudeau's speech is far more thought provoking than anything in Douthat's attempted rebuttal.

As to use of the word privilege. Trudeau used the word once in his speech, and he uses it with reference to himself:

I’m aware that I make these observations from a special position, one of safety. In America, no one goes into cartooning for the adrenaline. As Jon Stewart said in the aftermath of the killings, comedy in a free society shouldn’t take courage.

Writing satire is a privilege I’ve never taken lightly. And I’m still trying to get it right. Doonesbury remains a work in progress, an imperfect chronicle of human imperfection. It is work, though, that only exists because of the remarkable license that commentators enjoy in this country. That license has been stretched beyond recognition in the digital age. It’s not easy figuring out where the red line is for satire anymore. But it’s always worth asking this question: Is anyone, anyone at all, laughing? If not, maybe you crossed it.

He uses it twice, if you include the use of non-privileged:

Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.

I take the part of Trudeau's speech that is about Charlie Hebdo to be concerned with the responsibility that goes along with free speech. That's not an endorsement of government suppression of speech, but rather a question as to how individuals should weigh responsibility against possibility. In Douthat's criticism of Trudeau's speech, he failed to address Trudeau's point that 100 Muslims had been arrested for expressing support for the attacks. Does Douthat support those arrests because the Muslims, in exercising their free speech rights, were ignoring their responsibility? ...(A)lmost every official hierarchy of victimhood tends toward some kind of blindness or partiality.