So, the editors of a French satire mag called Charlie Hebdo were planning to put out an issue that was “guest-edited by Muhammed.”  And the front cover would have depicted the prophet with a speech balloon that contained the words “100 coups de fouet, si vous n’etes pas morts de rire,” which translated to English means “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing.”

We say “were planning” and “would have” because someone– no one knows who– firebombed the publication’s offices and destroyed everything inside.

And for good measure, they hacked into the mag’s website and posted, “You keep abusing Islam’s almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech. Be God’s curse upon you!”

Ha!  Don’t you love that?  “Freedom of speech” is an “excuse!”

Well, predictably, the outrage has been swift and universal.

Er… except for one dude at some obscure magazine named “TIME.”  (Remember TIME?  It’s still around, still publishing.  Someone must still be reading it.)

Bruce Crumley, TIME’s Paris bureau chief, maintains on his TIME blog that Charlie Hebdo is “no free speech martyr,” then says:

Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isn’t bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well. And within a climate where violent response– however illegitimate– is a real risk, taking a goading stand on a principle virtually no one contests is worse than pointless: it’s pointlessly all about you.

Charlie Hebdo, the file’s URL informs us, “is a victim of its own obnoxious islamaphobia.”

The paper’s satire is characterized as “antics” which are “futile and childish.” Not only that, but “they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists” that occurred this week.

Can you imagine Crumley and other like-minded individuals being so eager to excuse violent behavior from any other group?

We’re defending Charlie Hebdo’s satire even though we haven’t read it… and we can’t understand French even if we had read it.

And folks like Crumley are condemning it without having read it.  This doesn’t stop him from calling Charlie Hebdo’s parody “idiotic,” “stupid and totally unnecessary” and “offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient.”  (All words which can handily describe Crumley and his commentary!)

The BBC ran an interesting piece on the French satire mag’s lineage and ancestors and sought to place Charlie Hebdo in the context of that country’s history.

Drawing on France’s strong tradition of bandes dessinees [comic strips], cartoons and caricatures are Charlie-Hebdo’s defining feature. Over the years, it has printed examples which make today’s representations of Muhammad look like illustrations from a children’s book.

Police would be shown holding the dripping heads of immigrants; there would be masturbating nuns; popes wearing condoms– anything to make a point.

So today when the paper’s staff say there is nothing unusually provocative about the Charia Hebdo issue– with its front-page cartoon of ‘guest-editor’ Muhammad– they are being perfectly truthful.

The only difference is their choice of target.

And in this case, the target decided to respond using some bottles, a few rags and a liter or two of “petrol.”

And some folks are all right with that.