The GoobNet SPEED est Charlie

Rich: Hey! Where is everyone? Conference room, now!

Wen: No, the lounge, seven minutes ago!

Jhonny: My desk, an hour and a half ago!

Nina: Wait, what’s going on? Why are we shouting out places and times?

Wen: It’s where you are and when you got there.

Nina: Oh. Then my desk, four minutes ago.

Wen: Gaby?

Gaby: Yeah?

Wen: What about you?

Gaby: What about me?

Wen: Where are you and when did you get there?

Gaby: What?

Wen: Where are you and when did you get there?

Gaby: [shouting] What?!

Wen: [shouting] I said, where are you and when did you get there?

Gaby: Right outside your cube, two seconds ago, because you were yelling shit at me.

Rich: Look, just come to the conference room, will you?

Jhonny: Who?

Rich: All of you.

Gaby: Why? What’s going on?

Rich: A conference. What else do we do in the conference room?

Wen: Make faces at you when you’re not looking.

Rich: That’s ridiculous. You make faces at me regardless of whether I’m looking.

Wen: I certainly do. [makes face]

Rich: [makes less funny face]

Jhonny: Dude, stick to what you’re good at.

Rich: Which is what?

Nina: You’re asking us?

Rich: Never mind. Anyway, we have to talk about the Charlie Hebdo situation.

Gaby: Oh jebus.

Rich: What?

Gaby: There could not be a more soul crushing story, could there?

Jhonny: Wait. What about the eleventh of September?

Gaby: Yeah, but this was targeted at journalists.

Jhonny: That’s worse than indiscriminately killing three thousand people thoroughly at random?

Wen: I’m with Jhonny. At least these guys were reacting to something specific.

Gaby: They were reacting to a fucking cartoon! What kind of raving psychopath actually gets up in the morning and goes, “I think today my brother and I are going to kill the guys at that satirical magazine! That sounds like a fine idea!”

Nina: I think I’d take that over the raving psychopaths who thought that hijacking aircraft and smashing them into buildings was actually something that their god wanted them to do.

Rich: Isn’t that sociopathy?

Nina: What’s the difference?

Rich: I thought I read somewhere that a psychopath is somebody who doesn’t have a sense of right and wrong, and a sociopath is somebody who does, but it’s at odds with the rest of society.

Wen: So because they believed they were in the right, they are sociopaths and not psychopaths?

Rich: Yes.

Wen: So? What difference does it make? They were not in the right.

Rich: Why not?

Wen: “Why not”? Rich, did you seriously just ask that?

Rich: I’m just asking. Trying to get to the truth.

Gaby: The truth is that any society where discourse is controlled is headed for trouble. Doesn’t matter if it’s, like, an Islamic caliphate or whatever those guys believed in, or a fascist police state, or anything. Even if it’s a country that has laws and a constitution protecting freedom of speech, it’s useless if nobody uses it. If people are afraid to say what they think.

Rich: Why is that? What makes it useless?

Wen: Iraq.

Nina: Iraq? What about it?

Wen: Remember everything the Bush administration said about Iraq in 2002? Before the invasion? It was all, “Oh noes! Saddam has weapons of mass destruction that he can launch in forty five minutes, and he’s trying to get yellowcake from Nigeria, and he’s hanging out with Osama, and oh my god he’s right behind you boo!”

Gaby: Exactly. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Rich: So what’s the connection?

Gaby: The connection? The connection is that nobody called them on it. Nobody called them on their bullshit.

Wen: Right. It was all that “with us or against us” shit.

Gaby: Yeah. And because the media couldn’t grow a pair and tell us that it was all bullshit, they led us into this huge war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, all without even making the region any more stable.

Wen: Made it worse.

Nina: Wait. Did you just say “grow a pair”?

Gaby: Yeah.

Nina: Seriously?

Gaby: Yeah. Why? What’s the big deal?

Nina: It’s totally sexist language. It just keeps playing into the stereotype about how men are supposed to be assertive and women are supposed to be submissive. It implies that only men can stand up for themselves.

Jhonny: Maybe she meant a pair of breasts.

Wen: [facepalming] You sound like Edvard.

Nina: Speaking of totally sexist language...

Gaby: Look, the point is, in a truly open society, only the media can silence itself. Anybody else who comes in and tries to bully the media around is going to see the kind of resistance that you’re seeing right now.

Rich: All right. So what happens next?

Gaby: The rally was a good start. But people also need to understand the importance of a free press.

Nina: Yeah. That’s what the rally was about.

Gaby: The rally was about unity. It was more about the French people coming together against violence. Which is good. It’s something that needs to be confirmed, but it’s still not much of a declaration. “Yes! Killing other people is bad! All of us living together without wanting to kill each other is good!”

Wen: You mean, are magazines and newspapers and television reporters going to be afraid to speak their minds?

Gaby: Right. Or will they show that they’re not going to be bullied into submission?

Nina: Or will they overreact?

Rich: Overreact how?

Nina: Like, there might be some magazines that will be like, “Fuck you. Next week’s issue is nothing but Mohammad cartoons!”

Gaby: Intentionally provocative?

Nina: Right. Basically daring extremists to come after them.

Jhonny: Well, that right there would be kind of extremist.

Nina: It could end up like an arms race. More cartoons, more shootings. More cartoons, more shootings.

Rich: That would be an actual culture war.

Gaby: Why would that be extremist, Jhonny? They have the right to do that.

Jhonny: Sure, but it doesn’t mean they have to. And they’d be alienating Muslims. If France really is united like they said in the rally, that means having respect for all of your potential readers. I’d rather see journalists take the high road.

Wen: Yeah, that’ll happen.