JE SUIS FREE TO OFFEND

I'm a big fan of freedom of speech. I'm a writer, so that follows, I guess. I'm also a big fan of cultural sensitivity. You see, you can't say what you like, have some common sense, some compassion, some self-control or at least some fucking class. 

I'm not a fan of terrorism, or killing people for their beliefs (although in the case of Rupert Murdoch, I'd be prepared to look the other way). But I'm not about to claim "Je suis Charlie" as the only cartoon Charlie with whom I feel any affinity has a dog called Snoopy. nor am I about to say "Je suis Voltaire" because i'm not prepared to die for your right to use your freedom of speech if you choose to squander it so spitefully. besides Voltaire never said it, it was his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, but why let the truth get in the way of a good meme. (Anyway if I start spontaneously speaking in French, call an ambulance as i'm clearly having a stroke.)

The fact is every belief system has its taboos. Even atheists like me have taboos, although in the case of many atheists, it's otherwise known as God himself.

In my home country of Australia, home of perhaps the longest running spiritual system on the planet, indigenous people get offended by representations of the deceased, and you often see disclaimers at the start of TV shows, warning people who may have these sensitivities. As far as I know, no-one has yet attempted to satirise these practises, probably because the dead are such a dodgy source of humour, and if they did I imagine there would be a public outcry from the same people who joined this latest round of hashtag revolution. incidentally they are the same people who next week will be sending me links to petitions to censor the rantings of some right wing shock jock, oblivious to the irony.

We live in an age of rage where everyone has a soapbox and everyone is trying to shout each other down, while pretending to support a free exchange of ideas. I would be considerably more comfortable with this latest craze of self expression if I didn't strongly suspect that what we are demanding is the right to offend, the right to bait and belittle, the right to devastate what people hold most dear. I would feel more comfortable assembling in city squares if the implication wasn't that i was supporting the desecration of someone's world view. I understand why people would take to the streets in horror after a massacre but what they are saying is that i am Charlie and I will support the ridicule of your religion because I'm too lazy to walk into your mosque and piss on your Persian rug.

Now before you think that I have no sympathy for the massacred staff of Charlie Hebdo, unlike most of you I've worked in offices like these. these people are my peers, and in my role as critic and commentator with a decidedly satirical slant, like the cartoonists who were killed, I get paid to be a professional bitch. so yeah it cuts kinda close to home.

So in response to my free speech, feel free to exercise yours in the comments section below. at which point i will exercise my favourite freedom of of all: my right to ignore you. but that's the thing about dealing with fundamentalists. They don't have that right, they don't know that freedom, the freedom to not give a fuck.