BY Alexander Korobko 8 Nobember 2015



Mr. Briar,

First all, may I say that your cartoons about the Russian plane crash are not just “blasphemous” (and that was meant, broadly, in moral sense, not in strictly religious terms), they are cowardly. Try the same about 9/11 and you’ll be branded as a moral terrorist, which is, perhaps, the most appropriate term for your magazine.

In your defence of the publication, you said: “We are a secular, democratic and atheist newspaper. The term ‘blasphemy’ has no meaning for us”. Do the terms “compassion”, “mourning” and “love” mean anything to you? Probably not… Your understanding of the term “freedom” is that … of a terrorist, who thinks he is free to explode and sow the seeds of conflict, only you do that “softly” – with a brush or a stylus.

But, you know what – you’re not Gustave Doré. Looking at your caricatures, I can’t help but notice their deficiency, both intellectual and artistic. Also, don’t forget: that was a Russian airline, but a French airliner. Care to poke fun at Airbus or, unlike the A321’s victims, they can get back at you?

But I thank you for putting the face – yours that is – to the immortal verses of our greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin:

A savage artist, brushstrokes sleepy,
The painting of a genius mars,
With sacrilegious scrawl unseemly
A senseless mess on it he tars.*

Alexander Korobko
Producer, “Russian Hour”

7.10.2015
Moscow

* translation by Julian Henry Lowenfeld

View Original Article: Russia Insider