A few days after more than a million people marched through Paris in support of Charlie Hebdo and the right of free speech, France arrested a controversial, anti-Semitic comedian named Dieudonné for allegedly supporting the Paris terrorist attackers in a Facebook post. "Je suis confused," Jon Stewart said on Wednesday night's Daily Show.
Sure, the U.S. censors naked breasts, but "generally we express our political outrage at objectionable ideas not through arrests, certainly not through murder, but through the purchasing or not purchasing of certain litmus-test sandwiches," Stewart explained — though if France followed America's Chick-fil-A model, "God knows you'd have diabetes in a week." Ultimately, Stewart decided that the best way to express France's free-speech dilemma was through a mock-French film starring two pencils and Le Pen (get it? If not, Stewart explains). --Peter Weber
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talkSpeed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposesspeed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wifespeed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play
