How can a commentator not write about Charlie Hebdo?

My first impulse was to publish caricatures of Mohammed, Moses, Jesus (of Nazareth, not the Mariners’ Jesus Montero), Buddha, and perhaps Ganesh, Zeus and Odin so polytheists wouldn’t feel left out. That would show ’em!

I’m less sure what exactly it would show ’em. Probably, it would have shown how easily I’m manipulated. That’s all anyone shows when they react predictably to a provocation.

In any event, I doubt it would show ’em anything at all. It would just be posturing. Because while I do have a few members of the clergy as subscribers (!) to the best of my knowledge leaders and adherents of radical Islam don’t read KJR. Why would they? The last thing they have in mind is keeping anything running.

I say “radical Islam,” not to avoid offending anyone. I say it because most Muslems condemn both the attack and the mentality behind it.

A letter-writer to the local newspaper asked why the Imams have been silent instead of roundly condemning the attack. If you’re wondering too, a little bit of Googling reveals that the Imams haven’t been silent. Other than those who preach radical Islam, many have been quite vocal and roundly condemning. Strangely, the American press appears to have, shall we say, under-reported this aspect of the story.

And if you’re among those who figure this sort of violence to be intrinsic to Islam because the Quran says something or other that seems to encourage it, consider this:

At other times in history, Islam was the world’s bastion of religious tolerance while Christianity was busily instituting the Inquisition. Neither of their religious texts have changed at all. Something that hasn’t changed is unlikely to be the cause of an effect that has changed — an unoriginal but important point to consider in this debate.

Another letter-writer pointed out that the First Amendment protects the newspaper’s right to use the n-word in print, asserting that newspapers don’t do so, not because they can’t, but because doing so would offend lots of people, and not only those to whom the n-word refers.

I sure hope that isn’t the reason. Not publishing (or saying in public) something because it might offend someone is a poor decision for quite a few reasons, the most important of which is how easily many people manage to become offended. Not saying something because someone might take offense is just another way of taking a vow of silence.

The difference between trying to avoid offending anyone and deciding to not be offensive isn’t a fine distinction. It’s the difference between cowardice and class.

A newspaper using the n-word as a routine adjective would be entirely lacking in class. The proper response would be to read a different newspaper. Publishing it as part of an exact quote is a different matter: Not doing so would be a failure to accurately depict the individual being quoted.

Blazing Saddles is worth mentioning in this context. When Mel Brooks first released the movie there were plenty of people who condemned it for its promiscuous use of the n-word in its dialog, just as there are still plenty of Americans who would prefer to ban Huckleberry Finn from school library shelves because children might read the name “Nigger Jim” and think that makes the n-word okay.

Personal opinion: Sanitizing either work would insult its audience while greatly reducing its very clear anti-racism message. That neither Mark Twain nor Mel Brooks received death threats probably needs no mention here. In any event they didn’t, and shouldn’t have.

Does this have anything at all to do with business leadership, IT leadership, or any other dimension of management in all its forms?

I think so, and it has to do with how we respond to public criticism.

The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre were punishing people who, they thought, had ridiculed and criticized their prophet.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S.A., it’s routine for managers to terminate employees who, on their own private time and publishing venues, criticize or ridicule their employers in public.

Sure, there are differences: Murder is illegal, firing an employee is not. Murder is unconscionable, termination is, depending on the employee’s circumstances, somewhere between inconvenient and devastating.

What isn’t different: Criticism is an opportunity to learn, as the same managers point out to employees when providing it in performance reviews.

For business leaders, reading and learning might not just be a better response to public criticism.

It might reduce it.