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I've been a political cartoonist
on the global stage for the last 20 years.
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Hey, we have seen a lot of things
happen in those 20 years.
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We saw three different Catholic popes,
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and we witnessed that unique moment,
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the election of a pope
on St. Peter's Square --
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you know, the little white smoke
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and the official announcement.
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[It's a boy!]
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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We saw four American presidents.
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Obama, of course.
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Oh, Europeans liked him a lot.
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He was a multilateralist.
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He favored diplomacy.
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He wanted to be friends with Iran.
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(Laughter)
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And then ...
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reality imitated caricature
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the day Donald Trump became the President
of the United States of America.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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You know, people come to us and they say,
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"It's too easy for you cartoonists.
I mean -- with people like Trump?"
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Well, no, it's not easy
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to caricature a man
who is himself a caricature.
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(Laughter)
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No.
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(Applause)
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Populists are no easy target for satire
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because you try to nail them down one day,
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and the next day, they outdo you.
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For example, as soon as he was elected,
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I tried to imagine the tweet
that Trump would send on Christmas Eve.
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So I did this, OK?
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[Merry Christmas to all!
Except all those pathetic losers. So sad.]
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(Laughter)
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And basically, the next day,
Trump tweeted this:
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[Happy New Year to all,
including to my many enemies
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and those who have fought me
and lost so badly
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they just don't know what to do. Love!]
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(Laughter)
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It's the same!
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(Applause)
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This is the era of strongmen.
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And soon, Donald Trump was able to meet
his personal hero, Vladimir Putin,
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and this is how the first meeting went:
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[I'll help you find the hackers.
Give me your password.]
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(Laughter)
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And I'm not inventing anything.
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He came out of that first meeting
saying that the two of them had agreed
-
on a joint task force on cybersecurity.
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This is true, if you do remember.
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Oh, who would have imagined
that things we saw over these 20 years.
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We saw Great Britain run towards
a European Union exit.
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[Hard Brexit?]
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(Laughter)
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In the Middle East,
we believed for a while
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in the democratic miracle
of the Arab Spring.
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We saw dictators fall,
we saw others hang on.
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(Laughter)
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And then there is the timeless
Kim dynasty of North Korea.
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These guys seem to be coming
straight out of Cartoon Network.
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I was blessed to be able
to draw two of them.
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Kim Jong-il, the father,
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when he died a few years ago,
that was a very dangerous moment.
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[That was close!]
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(Laughter)
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That was --
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(Applause)
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And then the son, Kim Jong-un,
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proved himself a worthy
successor to the throne.
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He's now friends with the US president.
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They meet each other all the time,
and they talk like friends.
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[What kind of hair gel?]
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(Laughter)
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Should we be surprised
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to be living in a world
-
ruled by egomaniacs?
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What if they were just
a reflection of ourselves?
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I mean, look at us, each of us.
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(Laughter)
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Yeah, we love our smartphones,
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we love our selfies,
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we love ourselves.
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And thanks to Facebook,
we have a lot of friends
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all over the world.
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Mark Zuckerberg is our friend.
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[Address book]
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(Laughter)
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You know, he and his peers
in Silicon Valley
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are the kings and the emperors
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of our time.
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Showing that the emperors have no clothes,
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that's the task of satire, right?
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Speaking truth to power.
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This has always been the historical role
of political cartooning.
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In the 1830s, postrevolutionary France
under King Louis Philippe,
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journalists and caricaturists fought hard
for the freedom of the press.
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They were jailed, they were fined,
but they prevailed.
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And this caricature of the king by Daumier
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came to define the monarch.
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It marked history.
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It became the timeless symbol
of satire triumphing over autocracy.
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Today, 200 years after Daumier,
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are political cartoons
at risk of disappearing?
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Take this blank space on the front page of
Turkish opposition newspaper "Cumhuriyet."
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This is where Musa Kart's
cartoon used to appear.
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In 2018, Musa Kart was sentenced
to three years in jail.
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For doing what?
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For doing political cartoons
in Erdoğan's Turkey.
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As I speak, he sits in prison.
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Cartoonists from Venezuela, Russia, Syria
have been forced into exile.
-
Look at this image.
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It seems so innocent, right?
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Yet it is so provocative.
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When he posted this image,
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Hani Abbas knew it would change his life.
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It was in 2012, and the Syrians
were taking to the streets.
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Of course, the little red flower
is the symbol of the Syrian revolution.
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So pretty soon, the regime was after him,
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and he had to flee the country.
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A good friend of his,
cartoonist Akram Raslan,
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didn't make it out of Syria.
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He died under torture.
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In the United States of America recently,
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some of the very top cartoonists,
like Nick Anderson and Rob Rogers --
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this is a cartoon by Rob --
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[Memorial Day 2018.
(on tombstone) Truth. Honor. Rule of Law.]
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they lost their positions
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because their publishers
found their work too critical of Trump.
-
And the same happened
to Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder.
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Hey, maybe we should start worrying.
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Political cartoons
were born with democracy,
-
and they are challenged when freedom is.
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You know, over the years,
-
with the Cartooning for Peace Foundation
and other initiatives,
-
Kofi Annan -- this is not well
known -- he was the honorary chair
-
of our foundation,
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the late Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Laureate.
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He was a great defender of cartoons.
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Or, on the board of the Association
of American Editorial Cartoonists,
-
we have advocated on behalf of jailed,
threatened, fired, exiled cartoonists.
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But I never saw a case
of someone losing his job
-
over a cartoon he didn't do.
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Well, that happened to me.
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For the last 20 years, I have been
with the "International Herald Tribune"
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and "The New York Times."
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Then something happened.
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In April 2019,
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a cartoon by a famous
Portuguese cartoonist,
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which was first published
in a newspaper "El Expresso" in Lisbon,
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was picked by an editor
at "The New York Times"
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and reprinted in
the international editions.
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This thing blew up.
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It was denounced as anti-Semitic,
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triggered widespread outrage,
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apologies
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and a lot of damage control by The Times.
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A month after, my editor told me
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they were ending
political cartoons altogether.
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So we could, and we should,
have a discussion about that cartoon.
-
Some people say it reminds them
of the worst anti-Semitic propaganda.
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Others, including in Israel,
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say no, it's just
a harsh criticism of Trump,
-
who is shown as blindly following
the Prime Minister of Israel.
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I have some issues with this cartoon,
-
but that discussion did not happen
at "The New York Times."
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Under attack, they took the easiest path:
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in order to not have problems
with political cartoons in the future,
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let's not have any at all.
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Hey, this is new.
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Did we just invent
preventive self-censorship?
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I think this is bigger than cartoons.
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This is about opinion and journalism.
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This, in the end, is about democracy.
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We now live in a world
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where moralistic mobs
gather on social media
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and rise like a storm.
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The most outraged voices
tend to define the conversation,
-
and the angry crowd follows in.
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These social media mobs,
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sometimes fueled by interest groups,
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fall upon newsrooms
in an overwhelming blow.
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They send publishers and editors
scrambling for countermeasures.
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This leaves no room
for meaningful discussions.
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Twitter is a place for fury,
not for debate.
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And you know what?
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Someone described pretty well
our human condition in this noisy age.
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You know who?
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Shakespeare, 400 years ago.
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["(Life is) a tale told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury, signifying nothing."]
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This speaks to me.
Shakespeare is still very relevant, no?
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But the world has changed a bit.
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[Too long!]
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(Laughter)
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It's true.
-
(Applause)
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You know, social media is both
a blessing and a curse for cartoons.
-
This is the era of the image,
so they get shared, they get viral,
-
but that also makes them a prime target.
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More than often, the real target
behind the cartoon
-
is the media that published it.
-
[Covering Iraq?
No, Trump!]
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That relationship between
traditional media and social media
-
is a funny one.
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On one hand, you have
the time-consuming process
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of information, verification, curation.
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On the other hand,
it's an open buffet, frankly,
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for rumors, opinions, emotions,
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amplified by algorithms.
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Even quality newspapers mimic the codes
of social networks on their websites.
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They highlight the 10 most read,
the 10 most shared stories.
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They should put forward
the 10 most important stories.
-
(Applause)
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The media must not be
intimidated by social media,
-
and editors should stop
being afraid of the angry mob.
-
(Applause)
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We're not going to put up warnings
the way we put on cigarette packs, are we?
-
[Satire can hurt your feelings]
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(Laughter)
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Come on.
-
[Under your bikini
you could be hiding a sex bomb]
-
Political cartoons are meant
to provoke, just like opinions.
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But before all, they are meant
to be thought-provoking.
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You feel hurt?
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Just let it go.
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You don't like it?
-
Look the other way.
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Freedom of expression
is not incompatible with dialogue
-
and listening to each other.
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But it is incompatible with intolerance.
-
(Applause)
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Let us not become our own censors
in the name of political correctness.
-
We need to stand up, we need to push back,
-
because if we don't,
we will wake up tomorrow
-
in a sanitized world,
-
where any form of satire and political
cartooning becomes impossible.
-
Because, when political pressure
meets political correctness,
-
freedom of speech perishes.
-
(Applause)
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Do you remember January 2015?
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With the massacre
of journalists and cartoonists
-
at "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris,
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we discovered the most
extreme form of censorship:
-
murder.
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Remember how it felt.
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[Without humor we are all dead]
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Whatever one thought
of that satirical magazine,
-
however one felt about
those particular cartoons,
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we all sensed that something
fundamental was at stake,
-
that citizens of free societies --
actually, citizens of any society --
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need humor as much as the air we breathe.
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This is why the extremists,
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the dictators, the autocrats and, frankly,
all the ideologues of the world
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cannot stand humor.
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In the insane world we live in right now,
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we need political cartoons more than ever.
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And we need humor.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
Yasushi Aoki
11:53 - 11:55
[Under your bikini
you could be hiding a sex bomb]
# bikini -> burkini
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkini
Yasushi Aoki
I think the following texts in the pictures also should be included in the subtitles:
00:50 [barack wants to become your friend NO/YES]
01:07 [U.S. Democracy]
03:06 [Assad]
04:26 [Address Book]