Why does the bar need raised? It's not a competition to see who can piss off religious people the most. The point of the cartoons is to convey a message. Just take a look at the new Charlie Hebdo cover for example. They could have acted in revenge and really, really mocked Islam - and it sounds like that's what you would have done. Instead they created something quite beautiful while still exercising their right to free speech and expression even as radicals tried to stomp them out. It's not a competition to be most offensive. It's trying to convey your message in the best way possible without fear of reprisal compromising that.
Why does the bar need raised? It's not a competition
to see who can piss off religious people the most.
Let's say in the future some other group gets upset at what journalists are saying. Maybe it's the scientologists, or KKK members, or animal rights activists, or hells angels, or anonymous.
They will ask themselves "What have people tried in the past in order to silence journalists, did it work, and can we do it ourselves?"
Then they will say "In the past people have firebombed offices and attacked journalists. Can we do that? Yes we can. Did it work?"
Society and journalists have to decide whether upset groups will say "Yes, it was effective at silencing journalists" or if they'll say "No, it was ineffective, in fact it made the situation worse".
Why? To make you feel smart or better than someone else? If there is an idea you think is bad and you want the other person to realise it is bad mocking it is a stupid way to go about that. Charlie Hebdo took ideas it thought were bad and didn't simply mock them but used satire and cartoons to explain why they were bad or ridiculous in a humorous way.
I agree with your sentiment that mocking should have its limits, but I subscribe to the view that "if you cross the limits of good taste, you're just being an asshole", and definitely not to the idea of shooting such people instead. People should have right to express their opinions safely, even when those opinions aren't in good taste.
Of course. In fact I'm not even sure we should put limits on mocking. My point was that the comment I was replying to simply wants us raise the bar of offensiveness. From what I can tell the point of something like Charlie Hebdo isn't necessarily to offend (that's a side effect). It's to shock and make people think about what they believe in. It's to show how something is silly. To imply that it exists simply to mock others is, in my opinion, offensive to the people who died creating it. I think the new cover shows that there is much more to this work than simply mocking something they don't agree with - I don't think the commenter I was replying to got that.
