Charlie Hebdo is an equal-opportunity insulter

By restricting cartoonists, you may risk defeating the whole purpose of a newspaper: to fervently engage readers in the news, issues and controversies of the day, whether through the relatively civilized rationalities of expression with the relatively barbaric "emotional drone attacks" of the editorial cartoon.

A few of the esteemed cartoonists with whom I worked have won the Pulitzer Prize and many other top awards. But in recent years, in US newspapers at least, the edgiest of them have either retired or been quietly retired.

The new crop seems tamer, even worryingly polite - more like genteel illustrators than the noisy but brilliant drunk at the family dinner table. The passion somehow seems to have diminished.