- PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP
- John Kass weighs in on the Charlie Hebdo massacre
Catastrophes happen and journalists feel they must respond, but a sense of obligation by itself doesn’t make us profound. John Kass writes about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in the morning Tribune and I’m not sure what his point is, but I write about it too on the Bleader and I don’t have a lot of confidence in mine. Those Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been drawn to make Islamists angry—that’s an insight that would have occurred to everyone even if I hadn’t pointed it out.
If you read Kass’s column, you’ll see that he rains contempt on left and right for the inability of either to deal with reality. But it’s the center that most disgusts him. Tepid? Accommodationist? Some words in the right hands sting worse than homicidal. I’ve always thought a willingness to speak my own mind and listen to people who dispute me speaking theirs was the classic centrist position; but if the center is merely the place where wimps huddle, then I’d better think twice.
