Scott Simon Charlie Hebdo Quotations

Everyone understood [Charlie Hebdo], as people had understood for hundreds of years, knowing that Rabelaisian tradition of French satire, they knew how to read it. And they understood the kind of release from piety that it represented every week.

I take Charb's point, but at some point has Charlie Hebdo been trying to have it both ways because some of what they do is not funny.

Charlie Hebdo was and is not The Onion or "The Daily Show." This is a different kind of satire. Might I put it this way - less politically correct.

Charlie Hebdo were the licensed anarchist clowns of the society.

Charlie Hebdo mocked everyone. They mocked the left. They mocked the right. They mocked, above all, the extreme right, the extreme right of Le Pen's. If anything could identify their politics, they were kinds of anarchists.