here is that the satire was poking fun at the rich and powerful. That is the role of satire.

When you start poking fun at the oppressed and powerless, then it's just assholery -- kind of like the fraternities that have "homeless" parties where everyone dresses up as homeless people. That's not satire -- it's cruelty. This is why Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year was rollicking.

Charlie had the right of free speech -- and they had the right not to be killed -- or even hurt -- for it. But, as Tim Wise points out so well, they weren't heroes as much as assholes. I didn't find many of their covers funny, interesting, or enlightening. I was never quite sure what point they were trying to make -- other than insulting people and being offensive.

but they didn't stop at the corporatists and royalty, they took on politicians, priests and mullahs, alike, as well as some of the more hilarious aspects of the various belief systems.

I said in another post that I found their humor to be on about the same level as the 1970s Hustler. Here we use lawyers rather than military rifles when our feelings get hurt, and the Falwell vs. Larry Flynt case went all the way to the USSC, where the first amendment protections were reaffirmed and nothing died but a bit of Falwell's gigantic ego.

Neither magazine seemed to go out of its way to hurt ordinary people, only to offend them enough to make them think.

I found them both puerile, but that's because I'm old and jaded. Were I 18, I probably would have loved them both.

Oh brother.

the oppressed and powerless killing innocents with AK-47s
the oppressed and powerless subjugating women and minorities

I'd go on, but I have to throw up.

and jewish people (which is what some of the cartoons in question remind me of).

It's all a matter of taste.

They have the right to print whatever they like but it doesn't mean we all have to like it.

permission to shoot people. I don't like lots of things, but I would not shoot someone for something they did that I didn't like. That's the difference between me and the terrorists who shot up Charlie Hebdo.

So religion has also been used to denigrate many groups, including black people and Jewish people and everyone else.

They have the right to practice whatever religion they like, does not mean we all have to like it.

In the US, both religion and artistic expressions are protected by the same 1st Amendment. Think about it.

whether religious or not.

But your point is well made.

delivering negative messages which in this case were about religion. Religion itself is a medium for negative message far more often than cartooning is. Religious clergy in the US and elsewhere speak outrageously hateful things about LGBT people every day, on TV, radio, in the press. The people on DU who are affecting a great concern for 'denigrating speech' around these cartoons never, ever express such concerns when US clergy is blaming US LGBT for hurricanes, for Ebola, calling us pedophiles (hey, Rick Warren equated us to pedophiles and within a month he was praying at Obama's Inaugural) you name it, they say it. And all of these 'there must be limits to satire' people do not ever have even a word of criticism for these clergy people.
They say they want 'hate speech laws' but what they want is anti-blasphemy laws. They want to continue with the sermons attacking gay or whomever they want, they just want to silence their critics.

So it is important to point out when people hold up one art form or art in general as being open to misuse that the very same is true about religion. Boko Harmum, I'm told, just killed 2,000 Muslims in Nigeria for offending them in some way. I did not even know they had that many cartoonists in Nigeria. Must have been really awful cartoons....

but I don't like the cartoons because they remind me of anti-semitic stereotypes. However, they should be allowed to print whatever they want, that's their call.

As for religion, I'm horrified at the spread of religious fundamentalism. It just dumbfounds me how we seem to be going to back to the Dark Ages in the Twenty-First Century! Whatever happened to liberal democracy and secularism?

This whole war on terror that began the century was sold on spreading liberal democracy and secularism but somehow morphed into the opposite.