Satire To Die For

 Charlie Hebdo (French for Charlie Weekly) is a French satirical magazine featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. Stridently non-conformist in tone, the publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right (especially the French nationalist National Front party), religion, politics and culture.

The magazine has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Muhammad. In the second of these attacks, 12 people were killed, including then publishing director Charb and several other prominent cartoonists.

While the court case into the most recent attack was underway in the French courts. a high school history teacher used copies of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons during a lesson on freedom of speech, a strongly held virtue of the French constitution. Days later the teacher was beheaded by an attacker n the street. Images and depictions of Muhammed are forbidden by Islam.  

The fact is that the editorial team at Charlie Hebdo were critical of every religion but not every religion believes that depictions of their God is blasphemous. Here in Britain, icons and statues depicting saints and even the Virgin Mary were removed from churches during The Reformation but that was in the 16th century. 

We have a long and agreeable relationship with political satire in the UK. Magazines such as Punch and Private Eye and television programmes like Spitting Image and Yes Minister engage with our love of lampooning politicians. President Trump has been the focal point of much hilarity in the British press for the last four years. No-one has taken to the streets and killed the editors. It doesn't seem right to shoot the messenger. 

The Human Rights Act Article 10 protects your right to hold your own opinions and to express them freely without government interference.

This includes the right to express your views aloud (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through:

• published articles, books or leaflets
• television or radio broadcasting
• works of art
• the internet and social media

The law also protects your freedom to receive information from other people by, for example, being part of an audience or reading a magazine.

As a writer and poet, I fervently stand by the right to freedom of expression. There is no freedom more important in a democracy. One only has to look at recent events in Hong Kong to realise that our freedoms are worth fighting for - and perhaps in the case of the staff at Charlie Hebdo  worth dying for.

Freedom

I was settling to notebook on Wednesday,
propped up on cushions, my pen filled with ink,
I switched on the telly for inspiration
and there was Hollande, addressing his nation.
His words in the face of a cowardly attack,
ignited French hearts with the fire to fight back.
With Passion for freedom,
patriotism free from oppression,
and power that derives only from freedom of expression,

rights hard-won through Revolution.
Knock one of them down
and a million will stand for the French Constitution.
They have no fear of insurgent suppression,
offend the French way –
they send in the Legion.
So what if some people have no sense of humour,
they laugh at their own - so why not at others?
And what of our British way of life?
Will we stand and be counted or run for our life?
Will we speak for the speechless?
Will we welcome the friendless?
Will we hold out a hand in a gesture of kindness,
or will we turn our backs,
alienating the mindless?
We’re enabled free thinkers,
we are Lancashire Dead Good Poets,
we welcome all voices,
and we want everyone to know it.
JE SUIS CHARLIE

Thanks for reading. Adele

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Comedy

When it comes to the funny side of life, stuff that makes us laugh, nothing, it seems, creates a bigger comedic splash than a good dollop of lavatorial humour, so let's get straight to it. Here's a little verse that I remember from childhood. You probably do too:

Oh dear, what can the matter be?
Two fat ladies got stuck in the lavatory.
They were there from Monday to Saturday.
Nobody knew they were there.

How we used to chuckle, smirk or snigger somewhat dismissively at that simple verse - and yet on careful reflection, it raises a number of very interesting questions, don't you agree? Allow me to elaborate...

01) Do we imagine it was a public convenience that the poet had in mind?
02) Or some domestic facility? Not one of those 'outhouses' at the bottom of a garden, surely?
03) When he, assuming the scurrilous poet was male, says they got stuck in the lavatory, exactly how was that?
04) Jammed together a single cubicle? Why???
05) Or in adjacent cubicles? - caught short simultaneously by the synchronising hand of fate?
06) Because of some mechanical failure of the locking mechanism(s)?
07) Because some joker (a scurrilous poet, perhaps) imprisoned them and ran away with the key?
08) Did they not think to call out? Bang on the lavatory walls?
09) Did their families not miss them? For six whole days!
10) How did they entertain themselves? By wrapping loo paper around their combs and playing kazoo-like duets?
11) By telling lavatory jokes and writing dirty limericks in lipstick? Unlikely.
12) By exchanging their life stories? At least they were company during the ordeal.
13) Maybe they know each other beforehand? As nodding acquaintances? Or intimate friends?
14) How did they keep warm? (at night, if it was winter)? By rubbing themselves? Or each other?
15) What did they live on for a week? Okay, they had water to drink and fat reserves to sustain them - but really...! Maybe after a couple of days they were too weak to call out.
16) Were they in a location that was visited so very infrequently? Almost a public inconvenience in fact?
17) Could this have been a religious building of some denomination, only open on Sundays? No, because they were entrapped on Monday and released on Saturday...but nice try.
18) Was their discovery after those six days of incarceration just a lucky break?
19) Were they very smelly when they were finally set free? Is that really what the matter was?
20) Should we read this verse as a cautionary tale with a hidden subtext? Suggesting that everybody should carry a mobile phone these days (as long as they don't drop it down the loo)?

By the way, my sincere apologies to any generously proportioned female readers if your sensibilities have been troubled by this little treatise. Let's move on...

Shakespeare has been dead for 400 years this month and the Dead Good Blog is honouring the Bard's memory over three weeks in April with posts on the themes of Comedy, History and Tragedy. You know what it is this week!

I actually wrote the following for the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth in April 2014 but I wasn't blogging way back then, so this is its first appearance outside of a couple of open mic outings. I owe the title in part to James Joyce, an extraordinary wordsmith in his own right, who had a penchant for devising cleverly punned names, Billy Waggledagger of course being his reworking of William Shakespeare. I'm also heavily indebted to the no less extraordinary E Jarvis Thribb, spoof poet in residence at Private Eye magazine, for the style and tone of the poem - and for allowing me to mention Keith's mum in print. (Keith's mum was an ample soul in an ample body and was often inconvenienced.) Enjoy...

Ode To Billy Waggledagger
So then Billy,
Bard is it you were?
Though not Welsh as far as I'm aware.

You certainly had a way with words.
You were a lover, not a fighter,
more importantly a writer
with a pen far mightier than your sword.

Boy, you certainly waggled your cursive dagger
to good effect -
all those histories and comedies and tragedies,
comical histories, tragical comedies,
not forgetting sonnets to swoon for
penned to dark ladies and gay lords.

It's a curious fact
that you were born and died on the same day
- not literally of course,
though that had Keith's mum confused for a while.

Whatever - you were the greatest.
As someone once said - was it Marlowe? was it Jonson?
"we shall not look upon your like again"
or some such.
(The rest is silence)

Thanks for reading. Have an epic week, S ;-)

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