Everyone feels great about proclaiming the slogan “Je suis Charlie,” but as David Brooks points out (okay, okay, get your catcalls and boos out of the way here), if Charlie Hebdo were published on just about any American college campus, the PC police would shut it down as “hate speech.”
Jonathan Rauch, who as mentioned here before is an advocate of gay marriage, has some useful observations about the campus craziness over speech in this five-minute video just out today from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE):
For more from FIRE on this whole business, see this.
Meanwhile, the estimable Judith Curry of Georgia Tech wonders if the newfound support for the free expression for satirists will extend to the climatistas in the matter of Michael Mann’s wrongheaded libel suit against Mark Steyn:
Anyone defending the satirists at Charlie should have a tough time defending Michael Mann in his legal war against the satirical writings of Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg. It will be interesting to see if Charlie and the defense of satirists changes the dynamics of the Mann vs NRO/CEI/Steyn lawsuits.
Don’t hold your breath (even if you’re doing so to cut down your CO2 emissions).
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