Am I Charlie? I could be. I love a good laugh, and love to see sacred cows get a gentle skewering.
And I love living in a country where that skewering is protected speech.
BEAUTY, CULTURE AND WIT
I’ve also acquired a fondness for our French friends. Shamefully, I once fell for that “France hates us/The French are rude” malarkey. On my first travels in Europe, I actually went out of my way to avoid France.
That was silly — and sadly ignorant.
When at last I put goofy prejudices behind and visited Paris for the most memorable wedding I ever attended, I kicked myself for having passed up so much beauty, culture and wit.
Yes, wit.
The cartoon is one of the oldest, most revered forms of French wit; sometimes stinging, sometimes gentle, sometimes bawdy, sometimes crude and, yes, even sometimes dumb.
The French have a strong tradition of satire and parody, and celebrate their press freedoms perhaps even more than we do.
At a big book store in Nantes, I found glossy graphic novels in which France’s political leaders were parodied as the Viking comic heroes Asterix and Obelix.
I grew up reading the French-Belgian “Tintin” graphic novels, which chronicle the teen journalist's adventures while poking gentle fun at authority figures.
So how can you shoot a dude for making you laugh? I don’t understand.
'THIS HAS BEEN GROWING'
When I interviewed the delightful, local, oh-so-French Madame Isabelle Mills last week for the Northwest Florida Daily News, she hit the nail on the head when she identified a culture clash.
“This has been growing for a long time,” she said of the massacre at satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. “I think when you accept more refugees and immigrants, more than you can absorb, sooner or later something has to happen.”
The North African and Middle Eastern refugees who flock to France, Madame Mills, my French friends and I have observed, have little interest in assimilating into the culture of the country they chose to move to.
In fact, our friends say, they seem to want special treatment and expect their host country to acquiesce to the ethnocentrisms they bring with them.
In a country full of centuries of a finely honed, sophisticated culture, that’s no way to win new friends among your hosts. Especially when you start shooting them when your knickers get in a twist.
THERE IN SPIRIT
As our French friends rallied around us on 9/11, I feel closer to mes amis in the wake of their tragedy.
I think of my journalist friends Odille, Franck and his sweet petit girlfriend, Katherine — who has never worn the same chapeau twice — who cover our sister city, Noirmoutier.
Could one of them pen something that might set off a loony with an Uzi?
I think of Maxime “Puppy” Quémener, who endeared himself to Crestview during his three-month internship at the News Bulletin as he started a career in journalism.
I feel a commonality. When a lunatic makes Sony pull a stupid movie, or a silly cartoon makes the wackos pull a gun, good old friends like the French and Americans — despite an occasional spat (all good friends have 'em) — stand together for the right to express ourselves.
Though I can’t be at the free speech rallies in the Place de la République, the neighborhood where I stay when I’m in Paris, I share our French friends’ spirit.
I am also Charlie. I think a lot of us are.
Brian Hughes, the News Bulletin's reporter, is president of the Crestview Area Sister City Program. Email brianh@crestviewbulletin.com or tweet @cnbBrian to contact him.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Je suis also Charlie