Francine Prose PEN

 The cartoon below was sketched in 2015.  

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Frederic Gauthier, Martin Brault, La Pasteque

 

Charlie Hebdo

Below is the front cover for issue #29 (2015).  

 

Dan Kennedy

Professors as Information Censors

On a l’impression que le dessin est de moins en moins toléré, que c’est une forme d’expression qui, même au sein des médias, est encombrante. Un peu trop atypique, un peu trop libre…  Même dans les grands journaux, les dessins deviennent extrêmement consensuels, il n’y a pas beaucoup de prise de risque éditoriale, les dessins deviennent un peu insipides.  [You get the impression that cartooning has become less and less tolerated, that it’s a form of expression which, even in the heart of the media, is burdensome.  A bit too uncommon, a little too free…  Even in the big newspapers, cartoons have become extremely consensual, there’s not much editorial risk taking, the cartoons become a bit insipid.  —trans gts]

—Riss, editor of Charlie Hebdo

It is the fifth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist massacre.  Are Northeastern University students aware of that?  As an alumnus of NU and out of respect for the murdered cartoonists, I request that the student editors of The Huntington News override the decision made by one of their professors, Dan Kennedy, to censor information.  Indeed, Professor Kennedy refused to circulate to his students a cartoon (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/democracy-under-siege.html), which I’d sketched satirizing The Boston Globe.  I’d sent it to the columnists depicted in the cartoon, as well as to the editor and several other journalists.  In a separate email, I’d also sent it to Professor Kennedy, who teaches in the School of Journalism.

To Professor Dan Kennedy, Northeastern University:

It is highly likely you will choose NOT to present the attached cartoon to your Northeastern University journalist students… and that would represent in a nutshell your problem as a professor of journalism.  Why not address it, instead of ignoring it?  

Professor Kennedy was the only one who responded.  For that, I praise him.  From my experience, The Boston Globe tends to ignore/censor hardcore criticism with its regard, something that clearly ought to be a focus for professors of journalism.  Professor Kennedy’s response was brief.

Hi, George —

I like the one of me and Renée Loth much better.

No, I won't be presenting it to my students. It's puerile.

DK

Apropos, the other cartoon, which Professor Kennedy refers to and also refused to circulate amongst his students can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/renee-loth-and-dan-kennedy.html.  I just posted it.  “Oh, my God, this cartoon is fantastic,” had written the professor, but again he would not circulate it amongst his students.  In 2013, I’d posted a different cartoon again satirizing the professor, and again he would not circulate it amongst his students (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2013/07/rosanna-cavannah-and-dan-kennedy.html).  Moreover, last June I’d posted an “Open Letter to Northeastern University School of Journalism.”  Not one NU professor would circulate the letter to his or her students.  In fact, The Huntington News would not respond.  It can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2019/06/northeastern-university-school-of.html.  

In any case, rather than issue a general kill-the-messenger message-killing epithet, “puerile,” why not instead contemplate precisely what points are made in the cartoon, then via reason and fact prove the points faulty.  That should be precisely what a professor and any thinking individual does.  But when one is bound by ideology and/or career connections, one tends NOT to do that.  Sadly, to dismiss a message that one does not like with a simple epithet has become a common practice today.  Hopefully, professors are not teaching and encouraging it.  

Was Professor Kennedy’s a worthy response?  Shouldn’t his students be able to make their own determinations?  Should professors serve as academic censors of information?  In essence, would the cartoon NOT encourage debate amongst students of journalism?  And isn’t vigorous debate a prime cornerstone of a thriving democracy, even at a school of journalism?  For a professor to dismiss the clear message in the cartoon as “puerile” is troubling.  

How perchance is it “puerile,” for example, to openly criticize a highly-biased newspaper’s refusal to publish anything highly critical of its editor?  How perchance is it “puerile” to quote the puerile statements of two of its columnists, while simultaneously presenting the newspaper’s latest self-vaunting focus, “Democracy Under Siege”?  Indeed, how does publishing such puerile columns like “Miss Conduct” and “Love Letters” serve to solve the democracy-under-siege problem evoked by the Boston Globe?  How does the latter’s rejection of hardcore criticism/satire like that presented in the cartoon solve the democracy-under-siege problem?  How is it possible that Professor Kennedy seems incapable of grasping these fundamental questions?   Might the Boston Globe constitute one of the hands feeding him?  Any careerist, academic or other, knows and obeys the basic career taboo:  thou shalt not bite the hands that feed.  

How is it “puerile” to criticize/satirize the Boston Globe as a likely contributor to the democracy-under-siege problem?  Might Professor Kennedy (like him or not is irrelevant!) also be a contributor to the problem?  If so, that would explain his dismissal of the satire as “puerile,” thus not worthy of his students’ attention.  Newspapers, like the Boston Globe, publish satirical cartoons, but not when the satire targets them.  With good-taste censors like Professor Kennedy in academic positions and Globe Editor McGrory in journalism positions, democracy will remain under siege.  In fact, one must wonder what Brian McGrory and his journalist colleagues think democracy is.  Do they think it is implementation of ideology, restriction of freedom of expression, and limited debate in accord with the parameters of their particular ideology?  

Finally, for several decades now, as a Northeastern alumnus, I have tried in vain to get the library directors at the university to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal devoted to literature, democracy and dissidence.   So, how can Northeastern, year after year, ask me to contribute money?  Well, instead, I will now contribute a free subscription, but only if the librarian in charge assures that issues will be placed on the shelf and not thrown into the garbage.  The cartoon in question will appear in the next issue of the journal due out in April.  If the librarian in charge accepts the offer, then Professor Kennedy’s students will be able to circumvent his censorship of information and make their own determinations as to the worthiness or unworthiness of that particular expression of freedom of speech.  And the same goes, if the student newspaper editor decides to publish it.  

The American Dissident, unlike the bulk of journals and newspapers, not only brooks tough criticism regarding it and its editor (me), but encourages and publishes the harshest received in each and every issue.  How sad that the Boston Globe rejects that modus operandi, de facto preferring “democracy under siege.”  How about The Huntington News?  Journalism constitutes a part of the democracy-under-siege problem in America.   If it continues to deny that fact, as it tends to do, how can that possibly help resolve the problem?  If student journalists continue in that darkness, how can that help resolve the problem?   In the realm of journalism, careerism and ideology, which ineluctably oppose truth and reason, constitute two of the prime culprits.  

Riss concludes (see above quote), “I think that free expression is in itself a sufficiently fundamental value, which has a future if cartoonists have the courage to inject into their drawings courage and strength.  If it’s only to present nice cartoons which upset nobody, they might as well not sketch at all.”  [« Je pense que la liberté d’expression est déjà une valeur fondamentale suffisante.  Ce genre a de l’avenir si les dessinateurs ont le courage de donner à leur dessin de la force. Si c’est juste pour faire de l’illustration et des dessins gentils qui ne dérangent personne, autant ne rien dessiner du tout » —trans gts]

In sincerity, again, I thank Professor Kennedy for responding… because from his brief criticism, I was inspired to write this essay.  Please, professors, avoid the epithets and embrace vigorous debate and freedom of expression, democracy’s cornerstones.  

Gary Trudeau

The cartoon below was sketched in early 2015.  A recent article, "The Comic Strip’s Heyday in ‘Cartoon County’," written in the New York Times by hack cartoonist Gary Trudeau, provoked the posting.  For me Trudeau is famous not for his Doonesbury inanity comicstrip, but rather for his apologizing for the Muslim murderers of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015, which is why Long Island University ought to be ashamed for giving him an award.  According to Trudeau, "Newspaper comics are regarded as a kind of public utility—a reliable, 365-days-a-year source of light entertainment."  So, we have cooptation of poetry... and we also have cooptation of comics.  Bravo to the facilitators like Trudeau...

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Juan Felipe Herrera

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Editorial The American Dissident #30

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

―George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

Absolut Vacuity

Assaults on Freedom of Expression

Privileged journalists and cartoonists, white and black, seem bent on drawing PC-red lines for satire and, in general, freedom of speech. I say, fuck’em!  In fact, any satirist worthy of his or her salt would say, fuck’em! They argue only the privileged—not them of course—should be targets of satire. But what about stupid statements, hypocrites, believers in idiocy, and speech-code pushers? Shouldn’t they also be targets of satire? Charlie Hebdo criticized Islam because of its fundamental idiocy. But that should have been off limits according to some privileged journalists, academics, and even establishment cartoonists like Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury fame. DIVERSITY/INCLUSION has become the establishment’s mantra. It is an Orwellian term meaning EXCLUSION of anyone not towing the UNIFORMITY of the PC-party line. 

The inspiration for this issue’s cover came from the website of the Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org), which I rarely visit.  Blazened on the main page in large letters were a couple of lines from the new poet laureate of the US Congress, high-and-mighty Academy of American Poets Chancellor Juan Felipe Herrera, the first Latino academic/literary hack to achieve that dubious position. For those lines of absolut vacuity, see the cartoon below. It is astonishing that only one person chooses/votes for the laureate, the Librarian of Congress (soon-to-be-replaced James Billington). It is even more astonishing that thousands and thousands of poets and academics across the country accept that autocratic- selection process without question or challenge.  Sadly, their open-wide-just-say-ah modus operandi represents the state of literature in a nutshell.  Dare question and challenge any of the literary organizations, organizers, or icons and be prepared for full ostracizing.  It is all very Soviet-like.  And if you don’t believe it, read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Oak and the Calf. The similarities are egregious! By the way, Billington is advised via the James Madison Council, a group of one-percenters led by hedge-fund plutocrat David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO of the Carlyle Group.  Thanks to the Council’s massive amounts of money, Billington has been treated to a one-percenter jetset lifestyle à la Michelle and Barack Obama.

The new editor of Charlie Hebdo, Laurent Sourisseau (aka Riss), was wounded during the Paris massacre and only survived by playing dead. I was tempted to cartoon him for what he’d said in a post-mortem July interview, but decided against it because of what he’d gone through. However, I do think he should have resigned rather than become editor and simply declare DEFEAT (i.e., the magazine would no longer draw Muhammad). Victory went to violent Muslim Islamofascists.  Defeat went to FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.  What really ticked me off was what Sourisseau had said: "We've done our job. We have defended the right to caricature.”  Well, that was true.  But now they were not going to do their “job” anymore. It would have been much better for the magazine to close its doors. Sourisseau aberrantly argued, “We still believe that we have the right to criticize all religions.”  Yet evidently that is NOT true for he has given up the right to criticize Islam.  He also put forth the lame everyone-else-does-it non-argument to justify the magazine’s decision not to draw Muhammad:  “The mistakes you could blame Islam for can be found in other religions.” Yet clearly people in those “other religions” are not out raping women, enslaving, beheading, and torturing in the name of their “other religions.”  In the case of Charlie Hebdo, Islamic violence defeated freedom of speech.  Former editor Charb, if he’d survived, would probably not have given up to the dictates of Sharia Law, as in Thou Shalt Not Draw Muhammad.  

Despite the dhimmi media, the Garland, TX draw Muhammad contest proved to be a real victory for freedom of expression in America and a consequent defeat for Islamofascism. Nevertheless, the organizers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, both prohibited from visiting Great Britain, where free speech has been greatly reduced by pro-Sharia-law, hate-speech legislation, must be extremely cautious in America. Their bold outspokenness has cost them the freedom to move about without armed guards.  Why hasn’t Obama spoken out about that?  Why has he not said a word about cartoonist Molly Norris?  Why does he not seem to give a damn about free speech?  Islamofascists in America will not rest until they’ve succeeded in replacing the First Amendment with anti-blasphemy laws. (Both Obama and Hillary worked with CAIR in such an effort known as the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18.) Bosch Fawstin, the winning cartoonist, must also be extremely cautious and keeps his whereabouts unknown. Amazingly, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), a purported advocate of free speech, would not publish Fawstin’s winning cartoon (see right), nor would it even mention Fawstin, as the winner. A “conversation” appears in this issue of The AD with CBLDF executive director Charles Brownstein, who argued I did not have the legal right to publish his email correspondence with me. But I did some research, and it appears I do have the right. If not, I take a chance in the name of free speech. Now, imagine a free-speech advocate like CBLDF suing me over a free speech issue…
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Open Letter to Juan Felipe Herrera, Creative Writing Professor,
University of California at Riverside,

Poet Laureate of California & Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,

And more of both than anybody knows. […]

—Lord Byron, RE poet laureate Bob Southey 

“Is Poetry Dead? Not if 45 Official Laureates Are Any Indication” was the title of the New York Times article that featured a large photo of you et al.  However, it is not a question of “dead,” but rather one of having or not having pertinence.  Poetry, in fact, really doesn’t matter today in America because, for one thing, poet laureates and other poets accorded voice are largely paid for and/or promoted by the academic/literary established order to essentially push pabulum verse apt not to offend elementary school children… and easily offended, multiculti-minded adult apparatchiks.  The bland poems read at Obama’s two inaugurals—shame on any poet who stoops so low as to be willing to read a poem only after a politician gives it the okay—serve as examples of such pabulum, as does the verse written by you, Juan Felipe Herrera, cited in that article as a kind of “Whitmanesque tribute”:  “Architects engineers laborers drivers Viva!/Lifters callers crane operators Viva!/Cement mixers cable threaders Viva!”  Whitman could indeed be bland and inncouous in his glory, glory hyperbolic rhetoric.  What is wrong with the New York Times, if it really thinks that line of yours worthy of mention?  Indeed, it sounds as if it might have been taken from the “Communist International,” which for some odd reason omitted to include mention of the millions of hard-working kulaks butchered under the Soviet state.  

In any case, I wish to inform you that I was permanently banned from commenting on the Academy of American Poets’ website in 2007 (see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets.html).  For the transcript of my censored comments, see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets_transcript.html). If unusually curious you decide to actually check it out, you’ll note the absence of racist or sexist epithets and threats.  However, my comments were not PC smiley-faced.  Fortunately, I saved the transcript prior to its being censored.  Poets should fight tooth and nail against such lowly censorship!  Why did your colleague Chancellors not do this?  Well, for one thing, they tend to be the censors!  My comments were offensive to them because I had (and have!) the audacity to criticize established-order poets and their  academic/literary established-order machine.  For that, I have been ostracized into poet oblivion.  But that was certainly to be expected, for poets are hardly at all staunch defenders of freedom of speech.  What they tend to be is politically correct and gregarious, as opposed to steadfast individuals and fervent advocates of free expression.  

Now, do you care about that egregious incident of Academy censorship or will you attempt to justify it like several of your Chancellor colleagues?  Will you stand as an individual to protest against that act of censorship and RISK upsetting your colleague censors?  As a ladder climber, you will likely respond with a NO, though not directly or to me.  You state in the New York Times article that poets “have to float and be transparent and pick up everything we can.”  Well, what the hell does that even mean?  Most poets don’t give a damn about censorship or issues of freedom of expression.  Hell, if they did, they’d end up ostracized like me and with no grants or speaking invitations, let alone tenure at some university.  So, are they supposed to be “transparent” about their apathy?  Well, that would be a good place to start.  So, are well-fed poets like you blinded by the feed or are they being fed because they were already blind?  Perhaps it’s a little of both?  How long have you been turning a blind eye to rise, as you have, in the ranks of the established order?  As far as poets “floating,” I’d much rather sink and not “pick up” any of those titles, grants, and academic perks you’ve received over the years.  

Finally, since the New York Times would never publish this as an opposing point of view, I send it to The Highlander, your university student newspaper.  Will Michael Rios, editor-in-chief,  publish it?  Will he even deign to respond?  Sadly, experience with such newspapers and journalists tells me that likelihood to be quite low.  These things said, how about getting your library to be the first and only library in California willing to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year), a journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence?  LOL…

[Rios never responded, nor did Herrera.]

Kathleen Parker

Eric Posner

Stephane Baillargeon

Chris Hedges

Sid Shniad

The following was sent to Global Free Press as a counter-editorial.  However, since the publisher has pneumonia, I am publishing it here.  Not sure how anyone can deny the egregious omissions in Sid Shniad's editorial.  

Ideology Must NOT Trump Reason and Fact

A Counterpoint Editorial

Somehow Sid Shniad’s pro-socialism, anti-capitalism, anti-Israel “68 Years of Struggle and Resistance for Peace, Justice and Freedom” editorial failed to mention that prior to those 68 years, the Palestinians were pro-Hitler and pro-Nazis.  Now, how could that fact have been omitted? Shniad seems adept at painting a black and white simplistic picture of Palestine as perfect, while Israel as perfectly evil.  Simplistic black and white depictions, as in capitalism is evil and socialism is good, should always be questioned and challenged.   To date, capitalist America, thanks to its First Amendment trumps perhaps every country regarding the basic human right of freedom of speech.  When I see dubious statements like so many of Shniad’s, I am compelled to respond.  Questions need to be posed.  For example, what preceded capitalism in the world?  Was the world much better off pre-capitalism?  Did people live longer?  Was there an equality of wealth?  Of course, the answers to those questions are NO.  Perhaps what preceded capitalism was a kind of pre-capitalism of trade and barter. 

As for socialism, some frightening examples exist, including Cuba, Venezuela, China, and the former USSR and Nazi Germany.  Because of those examples, I prefer to live under American capitalism, where I can freely express my opinions, more or less… but certainly more than in the country’s cited above… and more than in the socialist-leaning countries of the EU, where freedom of speech has become increasingly restricted.  “Rampaging capitalism” did not rampage across China and the USSR.  The former is still a communist country, ruled by a dictatorial elite, and tending more and more toward capitalism.  And why omit mention of the millions of human beings slaughtered under socialist regimes, both left and right-wing?  Capitalism, which Shniad fails egregiously to mention, did bring longer life spans and job opportunities for a greater number of people.  It brought some amazing inventions—it put men on the moon and amazing telescopes into space.  It brought cars, trains, televisions, radios, and computers.   Socialism did not do those things.  One problem socialism shares with capitalism is the inevitable wealthy elites.   The “impoverishment and degradation of many” is not the result of capitalism. Look at Cuba, Venezuela, and China for that.  Capitalism created jobs… and with jobs many people were able to lift themselves out of such impoverishment.  “Degradation” is a subjective term.  Capitalism, contrary to Shniad’s assertion, actually brought stability, though the communist/socialist dictatorships certainly did that too. 

                Now, how did the anti-capitalism rant (and I use that term because of the egregious omission of anything positive about capitalism) suddenly turn into an anti-Israel one?   If I were to agree with Shniad on one thing, it would be the creation of Israel in the Middle East.  Israel should have been created out of part of Germany, though again let’s not forget that the “Palestinians” and other Muslim groups were pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi and pro-incinerate the Jews.  Why does Shniad oddly omit such an important fact?  Apparently, the Palestinians today haven’t changed that much regarding kill the Jews.  I am by no means learned in Zionism, so will not comment much on it.  In fact, the term should have been clearly defined in the editorial. 

Contrary to Shniad’s assertion, the Islamic jihadis have in fact declared war on the West and Western capitalist values, including and especially freedom of speech, free inquiry, equality of women, gays, blacks, Jews, and the other groups mentioned.  Well, Jews were not mentioned, nor were apostates and kuffars like me.  How absurdly contradictory and egregiously taqiyya that statement on solidarity with the groups mentioned in the editorial!  Taquiyya, by the way, is Islamic approved prevarication used to sucker in or fool Westerners.  So, Sharia law is for such equality now?  Give me a break!

It is true the West is and has been battling away in the Middle East.  But contrary to journalist Chris Hedges, cited in the editorial, the Charlie Hebdo massacre WAS an attack on free speech and free inquiry and WAS rationalized by radical Islam.  How Hedges can state the contrary can only be explained by severe indoctrination.  How Shniad can agree with him can also only be explained by that.  The attackers were radicalized Islamists, like theBoston massacre jihadis, all fed nicely by the “Industrial West.”  They were not wretched and starving to death, as Shniad aberrantly implies.  Their attack was not one of “nihilistic fury,” but rather one of radical Islam paid for by Al-Qaeda.  Why was that fact omitted?  Hedges and Shniad are not interested in the truth or facts, but rather only in pushing some odd religion-of-peace narrative, much like Obama. 

Charb, editor of Charlie Hebdo was on Al-Qaeda’s Most Wanted List!  How did Shniad rationalize omitting such an important fact?  Why was he on that list?  Well, I’ll tell you why.  Charb was on that list because of the cartoons that mocked Muhammad.  How can Hedges and Shniad both deny such an egregious fact?  Was Charb some ultra-wealthy representative of the capitalist state?  Of course not!  He was a self-avowed socialist, though with anarchistic inclinations and a particular appreciation of freedom of speech!!!  In fact, most if not all the slaughtered cartoonists were socialists!  How can one take someone like Shniad seriously, when such facts are  purposefully omitted.  Finally, Shniad leaves out certain facts about Israel, including that it is the only Democracy in the Middle East and that its parliament contains Muslim members.  Where else in the Middle East might such a situation of co-existence between Jews and Muslims occur?  No where!  Why does Shniad omit mention of the butchery committed in the Middle East against Catholics? 

Bernard Descôteaux

JE SUIS CHARLIE

Not to be banal, but I definitely do stand with the massacred Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, though against 99.999% of the JE SUIS CHARLIE marchers cause 99.999% of them are flaming hypocrites.  In fact, the only national soi-disant leader who was not a hypocrite was President Obama.  Why?  Because he did not show up in Paris.  After all, how could he with statements like:  "The future should not belong to those who slander the prophet Muhammad."?  His desire certainly came true for Stephane Charbonnier and the other dead cartoonists.  I am working on some JE SUIS CHARLIE cartoons right now and will soon post one of several.  An essay I wrote soon after the massacre is on Global Free Press website.