Does political humor still exist? This is the question that Léa Salamé asked herself on the set of C to you this Wednesday, January 4, 2024. Invited to react to the controversy sparked by Guillaume Meurice on October 7, 2023 following a failed joke on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which earned him work warnings, death threats and even summons to appear before investigators following a complaint for “incitement to hatred”. On the air of France Inter, at the microphone of host Charline Vanhoenacker, Guillaume Meurice attempted a difficult joke on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by calling Benyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, a “kind of a Nazi, but without a foreskin”. An unprecedented wave of indignation, reinforced by the deputy Meyer Habib, the lawyer Gilles-William Goldnadel, pushes the director of France Inter, Adèle Van Reeth, to dissociate herself from her employee, and to send him a work warning.
Guillaume Meurice, supported by the comedian Bruno Gaccio, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Riss and by the journalist Daniel Schneidermann, is contesting this warning in court. Summoned on November 21, 2023 to be heard in a free hearing following of a complaint for “incitement to hatred”, Guillaume Meurice has been the target of violent death threats for three months, which led him to record his humorous posts without an audience, and at secret times. A historical situation, which Léa Salamé wanted to nuance on France 5, remembering that the joke only made him smilebut that she did not deserve such outbursts.
“Charline was caught in a vice, I want to greet her”
“It didn’t make me laugh, but it was just a joke. It didn’t make me laugh, I found it a failure; there are other failed jokes, like he makes good ones I find that the response given to a failed joke was delirious. The boy received death threats for this failed joke, was summoned to the police, he was questioned for I don’t know how long, Charline Vanhoenacker too. Charline took the Meurice affair in the face, she held the team together, really, I find her extremely strong and brilliant, and I want to salute her in this affair, because she was taken in a vice between defending his team, the management, the reaction of people…” the host of What an erabefore giving a personal point of view on the regular controversies which often target France Inter.
Sophia Aram and Charline Vanhoenacker worried
“I have never seen a place that aroused as many fantasies as France Inter. Maybe because it works? But there was a side where we had the impression for a certain number of people, they were listening to France Inter from 5 a.m. to midnight to try to see, tack, the moment when they will be able to return. condemns the journalist revealed by i-Télé in the mid-2000s, and popularized by Laurent Ruquier in We are not in bed. Léa Salamé concludes that it will become complicated in 2024 to attempt political jokes: “It went way too far. I just didn’t understand the extent of it. It’s political humor; is there still room for political humor? Sophia Aram asks herself the question, I don’t know if she has the answer. Charline also asks herself the question. Can we still do political humor or is it over? I’m asking you the question because I don’t have the answer.” Everyone has their own opinion on the matter!