Satire Does Matter

Lost in the wave of protest and commentary that followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo is an adequate understanding of the social function of satire says Justin E.H. Smith and reminds us that

Freedom of speech, I have been working toward saying, needs to be defended. But we also need to be careful not to lose the sort of critical sophistication that enables us to appreciate the very different functions of different moods of speech. The satirical mood is not the declarative mood. Mockery of an imam in Charlie Hebdo is not the Islamophobia of the National Front. Vovochka, another stock figure of Soviet jokes, who explains to his teacher when asked why he is hurling spit-wads in class that he is a "class enemy," is not really a class enemy (emphasis mine).

Living in a dominantly Muslim country, I hate to hear people saying murder of people in CH is terrible but... There is no but, there should not be.

Media That Accumulates Is Not Independent

S. Fitzgerald Johnson's latest article Egypt: Educating the Empire draws a number of valuable political lessons from the Egyptian crisis. Although he identifies five of them, I would like to touch the third one, media's role. Johnson argues that,

[...] media that accumulates, for a state or bourgeois class, is never independent. The military claims that its intervention on 3 July 2013 restored a revolution and was not a coup, and the media – both state and privately owned – has dutifully represented the intervention as restoring a revolution and not a coup.

[...] The military labels all those opposed to its coup "extremists" and the media obediently incites against the military’s opponents calling them "terrorists."

[...] The names vary – New York Times, Al-Ahram, Pravda – but media that accumulates is always the instrument of the dominant classes in society. And make no mistake – the dominant classes are those controlling material wealth, not the numerical majority.

On a related note, here are five Turkish newspapers of August 16th, copycatting each other with identical/exact headlines and placement, citing Erdogan's "Bir Musa çıkar hesabını sorar" about Egypt. This was not the first and it is beyond disturbing:

Clearly, making an informed decision on anything is getting more difficult each day. We have to find, create, protect and cherish independent news outlets vigorously if we really care about our freedom (and sanity I might add).