Freedom betrayed

I have a piece in the magazine this week on the disgraceful behaviour of Hillary Clinton and other US officials in the latest round of cartoon wars. During the last week the US Secretary of State turned into a film critic, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – head of the most powerful and expensive military in history – relegated himself to a telephone-salesman offering up his country’s founding principles at a knock-down price, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney decided that his job included condemning the work of amateur directors. But it gets worse. The same Jay Carney has now decided that his remit extends to commenting on what French journalists should or should not publish.

Last year the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was fire-bombed when it ran a picture some Muslims did not like. But the Paris-based publication has shown it has more commitment to the principles of free speech than anyone in the US government by running another edition with the same. And what does the spokesman for the head of the free world have to say?

‘We have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this,’ said Carney. Really? Only ‘questions’?  And would those ‘questions’ by any chance be ones that could result in the answer that Charlie Hebdo should not have published? Or is Carney willing to be persuaded that the French magazine is right?

At least the White House’s man had the decency to add that ‘it is not in any way justification for violence’, but he then added, ‘We don’t question the right of something like this to be published; we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it.’

I know that there are some people who wonder why these things aggravate some of us so much.