Charlie Hebdo, An Inspiration

                      Charlie Hebdo, if you haven’t heard, is a magazine that in a sense makes fun of everything using series of cartoons to illustrate their senses of humor. Recently the largely populated area of Muslim’s in France got a little upset about a cartoon done of their prophet Muhammad. A little upset is an understatement, two Muslim extremists came in and killed ten of Charlie Hebdo’s employees and two policemen as well. Most people would think to back off to avoid even more casualties, and that’s the exact opposite of what they did. They decided to make another cartoon with Muhammad holding a sign saying “Je Suis Charlie” meaning I am Charlie in French, pretty ballsy move. You would think that the Muslim extremists would bomb the whole building where they work, and they very well could, but they haven’t yet, and this cartoon has only helped them. It has given them fame and revenue, normally Charlie Hebdo prints about 60,000 copies of their magazine, but after the killings they printed and sold over 5 million copies. Talk about opportunity cost, I mean yeah they lost 10 lives but they sold over 5 million copies! But in all seriousness the loss of those employees is a tragedy, it’s inspiring that these people, even after those deaths, continued to fight for their cause knowing well that there could be dire consequences. These people had a choice, either to back down and get walked on and killed, or to stand up and make a statement, if only everybody had an attitude like the people of Charlie Hebdo.