# 273 – I am Charles

January 14, 2015

I am Charles

So waddaya think…3 million copies of Charles sells out quickly – everyone wants a copy because….because what? I call it the ‘Diana syndrome’. This is taking ‘no such thing as bad publicity’ to the extreme. I bet they’ll run a reprint. But how many will buy a copy next week, next month? Do they really care? Perhaps they do.

What they see inside the openly atheistic magazine is anarchistic, insensitive. There are cartoons against all leading religions. Plus it’s a gentle nostalgia trip through many of the late-cartoonists’ best works.

So is one on the side of what ‘Charles’ stand for? Is it OK to provoke religions’ sensitivities?

Does the average (French) ‘man-in-the-street’ want to be attacked again?

There’s a potential battle coming…we know that ‘all is fair in love and war’, but the Islamist extremists play even more unfair. They’ll go for the softest targets.

They’ve given this war a name: the battle for free speech. But it reflects much more, such as the battle for decent co-existence.

Who knows…someone might actually recognise that Israel’s been right all these years…

Interesting time, this.

And poor Prince Charles. He thinks that he’s the subject.

Stephen