Silk Spanks Donohue

Mark Silk at RNS writes on the differences between French and American attitudes towards language about religion, but rightly concludes that Bill Donohue of the Catholic League gets it wrong, blaming the victim in the case of Charlie Hebdo. What I do not get, what I have never gotten, is that satire only works when it is outrageous and, just so, not believable, although it succeeds when it touches on a deeper truth. This was the core issue in the famous case Falwell v. Flynt. At least we solved that case in the courts and, improbably, Rev. Falwell and Larry Flynt became lifetime friends. Flynt even blurbed my biography of Falwell. There are so many cultural aspects of the attacks in Paris and the response to them. Marching down Boulevard Voltaire, who was not merely, as the Washington Post called him this morning, a champion of religious toleration. Seeing the cardinal-archbishop of Paris at the Grand Synagogue last night, only a few decades in the apostolic succession from the collaborationist bishops of the 1940s. The persistent voices of moderate Muslims - let 2015 be the year of the moderate Muslims throughout the world!