Who has the last laugh?

Everyone has their take on the terrible Charlie Hebdo incident. Some say the journalists had it coming, some are speechless but recovered quickly because the earth continues to revolves around the sun, but most are stunned and outraged by the sheer violence.

A friend even took to Facebook, wondering via hashtag #buyinggunssocheapmeh# while another feels owning guns in this case is not the point anymore.

When one whets a knife back and forth, back and forth on the whetblock, the goal is for the knife to serve our purposes better. In this case, both camps have been sharpening their knives and taking aim. Not surprisingly their aims aren't that dissimilar. They want to hurt and insult.

Everyone wants freedom of speech and satire is without a doubt a valid outlet to lash out at the opposite camp, by giving the public something to laugh about and at the same time offering some food for thought for us to chew on. When, however, the supposedly intelligent and witty satire transgresses into using crudity and vulgar means to express dissent and outrage, its feet are already in its own religion prison, wielding its sword without any air of common sense. As laughter humiliates and the blade of the nib hits the heart, one can't help noticing the shinning light of hatred from the knife from the other camp. This time real blood flows... It certainly does not justify cold-blooded murder of innocent lives. While the camp's unwavering belief of 'death to blasphemers' and 'death to apostates' doesn't hold in this modern time and age, it undeniably provides them with a sense of pride and righteousness when the duty is done because it is their codified shariah law. If it is as they believe, that god had indeed created human beings to be his defending tools for all the injustice he suffers, so has god suddenly become the fearsome satan?

Is Charlie Hebdo having the last laugh now? Can they laugh in the wake of their dead colleagues? Are they now more determined than before to wage a war against the other camp?

It is, sadly, a vicious cycle.

'We have shown that the comic character always errs through obstinacy of mind or of disposition, through absent-mindedness, in short, through automatism. At the root of the comic there is a sort of rigidity which compels its victims to keep strictly to one path, to follow it straight along, to shut their ears and refuse to listen. In Molière’s plays, how many comic scenes can be reduced to this simple type: A character following up his one idea and continually recurring to it in spite of incessant interruptions! The transition seems to take place imperceptibly from the man who will listen to nothing, to the one who will see nothing, and from this latter to the one who sees only what he wants to see.' - Shooting the jesters by Anthony Lane