The terrorist attack of two days ago in Paris to the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo left most of us hit hard by the blow to freedom of the press and freedom of thought, which are among that core set of rights on which we have built our society and which we feel we really cannot give up.

I confess I have never unfolded a copy of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, but I am quite familiar with the work of Wolinski, the 80-year-old cartoonist, who perished in the attack along with his colleagues. I liked his sense of humor and his cartoons a lot, and I am quite pissed off by those two morons taking that away from me.

However, there is a side view to the whole story which I want to rant about here. Today everybody seems on the side of Charlie Hebdo and the dead journalists and artists, and in a few days, when the next edition of the newspaper will hit the press halved in number of pages, it is widely expected that a million copies will be sold. Around the world people are raising pencils and vowing "I am charlie hebdo". It would be all very good, but I do not think this emotional reaction pictures the situation quite precisely.

The fact is, satire is something that hurts. Charlie Hebdo's satire hurt the muslims, and a few fanatics decided to retaliate in the only way they know how to do it - with guns. But the same satire also hurt other classes of people, very democratically and transversally; and in several cases reactions were not as bloody but almost as hot. Here I want to point out that if we believe in the freedom of expression and thought, and in the freedom of the press - if we really believe in it, that is, and stand by its defense, well - then we should accept that it sometimes hurt us as well, without making a big fuss of it.

To understand what I mean take the cartoon below. If you are a religious Christian, you might find the cartoon offensive and inflamatory; even if you aren't, you might find it of bad taste, to say the least. If you are like me, you might smile at the concept and chuckle by observing a few details (say, the holes in the extremities of JC, or the triangle's action). I wonder how many of those who are raising their pencils today would have shrugged their shoulders yesterday upon seeing this cartoon.