I'm a cartoonist, it's my job to create "brutal" and "bilious" cartoons

A self-portrait by Martin Rowson with a skewered Prime Minister, David Cameron

We artists live under a convention. We have a license to offend. A warrant and a commission to eviscerate people with a pen. Robert G. Ingersoll said:

"The instance we admit that a book is too sacred to be debated or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs."

Dominic Cooke is an English theatre director, playwright, and the artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre in London, in 2009 he said:

"Artists have a right—and sometimes a duty—to offend their audiences."

Kenan Malik wrote in 2015:

"Social change cannot happen without causing offence."

I'm with David Allen Green who wants to ban banning things. My response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting can be read on the Huffington Post here. An earlier piece on the Huffington Post from 2014 on being a cartoonist and by effect, a giver of offence, here. See my run down on the cartoons that followed the shooting on Slugger O'Toole here. My previous cartoon on drawing "brutal" and "bilious" cartoons here. See some cartoons below which I consider illustrative of the point that cartoons hurt and that's the point.