Others in France responded to Fox and the threatened suit in the vein of Charlie Hebdo—with satire. Interviewers from the TV comedy Le Petit Journal asked three local black teenagers how they find Père Lachaise, one of the no-go areas depicted by Fox. “It’s a pleasant place to live,” one said. “I’ve always lived here without a problem.”

Many Parisians are also asked whether they would compare their city with Iraq or Afghanistan, to laughter from the French audience. One might wonder whether residents of those countries would find it funny to have their homelands thus ridiculed.

The cartoonists who were killed were targeted because they depicted the prophet Mohammed. Then, as the city mourned, a comedian was arrested after saying he identified with one of the killers. In Paris, wounded though it is, the idea will dawn that if the right to offend is sacrosanct for the French, then media outlets across the world will have to be treated the same.

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