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IGLOON “OPENS UP SHAKESPEARIAN THOUGHTS”
Creepy cartoonist Michael Leunig – he who feels sorry for Osama and believes Anzac Day represents that which is dysfunctional, tragic and ugly in our society—defends his perverted doodling:
“Why do you criticise Israel and not the Palestinians?” Well, my work is usually humanistic, so in a universal sense it can be safely assumed that I’m deeply reluctant about anybody’s violent policies or deeds. Political cartooning is particularly interested in the phenomena of our hypocrisy and is not so much concerned with decrying the obvious, conventional devil, but with revealing that there is a bit of the devil in all of us. Yes, it is not afraid to be negative. It’s a spiritual inclination expressed in the wise Hasidic question: “What is my part in this?”
Oh, please. You drew a dumb picture that described the founder of Hamas merely as an “old Palestinian man in a wheelchair”. This isn’t humanism; it’s Bambifying evil.
As far as I remember, I have not done a cartoon about Israel for about a year, unless you count the ones about Iraq. Cartoonists are very reluctant to go near this prickly subject because there can be a large personal cost. One New Zealand cartoonist recently lost his job over such a cartoon, which I think is a terrible shame.
It’s a terrible shame he had a job in the first place. Leunig continues:
There comes much vicious mail, much vitriol and great swathes of annihilating insults on those futile and frustrated hate blogs. When you’re alone on the receiving end of such malice and loathing you get a privileged insight into what lies beneath the surface of our “civilised society”. The Cronulla riots are only a small part of the sick mosaic.
Quick, to the beach! They’ve cornered a cartoonist!
In this robust atmosphere I, perhaps foolishly, made a cartoon about that strange situation that is a person’s dying days - not to have a swipe at Sharon or Israel but to open up some more existential and, dare I say it, “Shakespearean” thoughts about the pathos and wry darkness of this powerful man’s demise as well as the tragedies and dilemmas in which he has been implicated. I thought it worthwhile. And as a humorist, as distinct from an essayist, I found a dark approach befitting the subject.
That wasn’t a swipe at Sharon and Israel? Wow. Don’t hold back next time, Shakespeare. (I guess this wasn’t a swipe, either. It’s nice that Leunig finally has a wry and existential editor who doesn’t reject his viler works.)
Cartooning is nothing if not primal and emotional - the shadowy, natural truths and organic indecencies that make many readers and some intellectuals squirm and others laugh, inwardly at least. The best cartoons are also philosophical and poetic by nature, rather than slick and expert; they are sublimely ambiguous, disorderly and vague, and their purpose is not to nail things down but to …
Screw things up? Just guessing.
I can almost imagine that if Sharon could have sat up from his coma and seen the cartoon, he might have approved: “Yeah, that’s me, with the last movement in my body I’ll attack my enemies, whoever they are.”
Well, he might have thought that, if the cartoon had presented anything similar. Instead it depicted Sharon as the killer of innocent old cripples. Leunig is beyond repair.
(With help from Tony Thomas)
UPDATE. Tim T.: “Leunig used to be an exceptional cartoonist: original, and funny. Nowadays, all he appears to be producing is hate-filled propaganda. It’s disgraceful, and The Age should fire him.”
UPDATE II. Age readers react:
Michael Leunig’s self-justifying apologia for presenting only one side of the story appears to rely on his “right” and duty to be the conscience of our times, as if he has a lien on the perception of evil.
However, rather than exonerating his dreary preoccupation with pillorying America and Israel, it shows a man whose biases are no more worthy than our own, and, worse, who manifests a beatific rightness in his cause.
S. C. Chafe, North FitzroyMichael Leunig should stick to cartoons. Despite the fact that I think he is poorly versed in international relations, it is far easier to understand his perspective than his waffly, incoherent opinion piece.
Sam Graves, MelbournePlease continue to help us carry our burdens, Leunig. We need you.
Ann Young, Camberwell
In the commemoration of war, as in war itself, civilians don’t ultimately matter.
Soldiers are often civilians who care enough about defending their country and way of life to join up and, if it comes to that, be injured or killed in order to stop those for whom civilians REALLY don’t matter!
Wake up Leunig. Your compassion is fraudulent if it ignores the real sources of evil.Leunetig should relinquish his self-justification using Hasidic reasoning and spend more time looking in the mirror for insights about the sick mosaic of what lies beneath his own facade of civilisation.
What a fucking weasel the way he exonerates himself by evoking Sharon’s hypothetical blessing for being a killer of the disabled poor Sheik.
Anyone have a contact email for Mick leunigg?
Ta -Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 01 13 at 06:05 AM • permalinkBambifying evil
Good god, what an expression. I am not worthy, I am not worthy. [/Waynes World]
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2006 01 13 at 06:05 AM • permalinkWell, I’ve just emailed Mr Leunig and asked him his opinion on the Danish cartoons.
I asked him whether he felt the artists should be censured or subject to abuse. If I’ve not heard back from him in 7 days, I’ll post the letter.
(I’ve got a new correspondence policy. People get 7 days to respond with a yea or nay for privacy. If they don’t respond, I take it that they have no objection to my posting the letter for all the interworld to see.)
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 01 13 at 06:27 AM • permalinkPoint One: yesterday when critical letters about the cartoon were published in The Age, they were put in the middle of the Letters section. Today they run two letters defending Leunig as the lead letter and second-lead letter. (The Age doesn’t publish the name(s) of its Letters Page editor, but the op-ed section is managed by Mark Baker and David Bernstein (!) )
Plus Leunig gets a giant slab of p13 to defend himself against a few brief letters.
I view this as abuse of editorial privilege.
My second point is The Age’s and Leunig-lovers’ fixation on the Leunig/Shakespeare comparison. Thus the headline:
“Why Leunig is the Fool we have to have” - note the capitalised “Fool” - and Leunig makes the comparison himself today - he wants to open up “some more existential and, dare I say it, ‘Shakespearean’ thoughts…”
The sophistication of the first letter writer on this analogy is indicated by his “Nothing will come of nothing, speak again”
(in fact Lear to Cordelia—not to the fool); and “Alas, poor Leunig”—eh? that was Hamlet apostrophising to the long-dead jester, Hamlet’s point being that the jester was no longer funny.
Plus the Leunig feature headline: “Holding the mirror to a fractured world” is a variant from Hamlet.
In Leunig’s piece, note some of the arguments…
(a) Some of my best friends are Jews
(b) Israel’s struggle for existence is referred to as “the troubles” - comparable to a bit of religious-based fanaticism in Ireland
(c) self-pity: he whimpers because his vitriol gets a vitriolic backlash, and he cites a NZ fired cartoonist to generate more sympathy.
(d) his weird concluding para—he complains that no-one speaks/spoke out FOR the Jews?
(e) weasel words—he is not literate enough to recognise them as such: “Many” commentators depict Sharon as “probably” a serious war criminal and “quite possibly” a bribe-taker..
(e) Irrelevance - what have ‘hate blogs’ and ‘Cronulla’ got to do with his attack on Sharon?“Political cartooning is particularly interested in the phenomena of our hypocrisy”
We hear you Leunig, now listen. WE are not just people that vote for Little Johnny Howard, there are the very vocal likes of you, anti-American student protests, that communist rag you work for, a largely left wing academic community, etc. Where are your cartoons depicting the hypocrisys of THAT side of US?Here’s a cartoon you missed, there’s a fat white westerner tied up in a shack in Baghdad. His friends next to him are getting shot by his kidnappers. In one corner stands the editor of a major Australian newspaper, he’s sipping a late and exclaiming how he thinks the fat white prick is a rather scruffy course individual. Where was that cartoon?
Embarrassing.
What were the chances he would apologise for being a dickhead?
On the contrary, such criticisms put Leunig where he wants to be: victim-hero; sole, plucky voice among the deluded racists and hypocrites who voted for Howard and cannot perceive the unsparing light shed on their ignorance by his Shakespearian ‘thoughts’.
Can a mere cartoon bear the weight of such genius? Verily, he is a prophet among bean bag expressionists.
He and David Williamson should at least start a Proust Book Club.
‘For a long time, I went to bed early.’
“There comes much vicious mail, much vitriol and great swathes of annihilating insults on those futile and frustrated hate blogs. When you’re alone on the receiving end of such malice and loathing you get a privileged insight into what lies beneath the surface of our ‘civilised society’.”
Yeah, beheadings, etc., don’t really tell you anything. Oh, if only to be Leunig so that I could have such a “privileged” awareness of the unwarranted evils lurking within men’s breasts. But perhaps he also dreams a lust for the real thing, the ultimate existential experience of being slowly beheaded, to come then as a skull and be mourned and recalled by untold generations of Moonbats forever. Sigh…
I think liberals such as Loonig want a change to a society where things don’t change, a safe society that they feel comfortable in, a secure and predictable society based upon their idea of government and social order, rather than the secular Western society that is moving forward, although slowly ... is that a contradiction on the roles of liberals and conservatives ... I bloody think so ...
What a wank.
*fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap*
Posted by Quentin George on 2006 01 13 at 06:45 AM • permalink“There comes much vicious mail, much vitriol and great swathes of annihilating insults on those futile and frustrated hate blogs.”
A technorati search for people who have linked to The Age cartoon yields three results. I challenge anyone to show that the commentary on these blogs ‘hateful’. What hate blogs is Leunig referring to, precisely?
Fixed. Please use preview, people.—A.H.
Michael Leunig is a LAME (Look At Me Everybody) cartoonist. His motivation is self-promotion and his meanshttp://humbugonline.blogspot.com/2006/01/secret-of-michael-leunigs-success.html to that end is a carefully cultivated and developed lack of graphic skills and complete avoidance of any recognisable form of humour.
Whoops. Sorry, guys. Link here:
http://www.technorati.com/
search/www.theage.com.au
/ffximage/2006/01/10%2
Fcartoon_1101_gallery__470x332.jpgGiven that Leunig apparently refers to himself as ‘an idiot’ in the last line of his comment piece in today’s Age, should he also petition the Age Editor for a pay cut? An idiot’s pay rate would be about $15 an hour (minimum wage); my guess is that Leunig is on about $200,000 from The Age and plenty more from ad hoc work and royalties. Idiots should not be over-paid.
Maybe the way to counter Leunig is to complain to the press when one of his offensive cartoons appears ... but complain regularly and also to the other press companies ... you do it here on Tim’s Blog ... why not send a letter or an email when Leunig becomes obnoxious ... a bit of effort but simple ... that’s how the opposition do it, let’s use their tactics ...
#31 - don’t expect The Age to publish your critical letters, although it will publish unlimited numbers of letters over time from such lefty luminaries as Peter Kartsounis, Footscray and Margo lookalike Marilyn Shepherd of Kensington, SA. Given that The Age has published anti and pro Leunig letters in the ratio of about 3:2, I would love to know what the ACTUAL ratio of anti letters were to pro ones - maybe 20:1?. I think the whole of Melbourne’s Jewish community is in a state of outrage over Leunig, and The AGe editor is having some worries about the backlash - hence allowing or inciting Leunig to publish his mealy-mouthed apologia which includes the ‘apology’: “I perhaps foolishly, made a cartoon…”.
Leunig is also a devout Christian, so I am told.
No Louis, he was brought up Methodist and gave it up for some kind of Buddhism. His kind of Buddhist adopts pacifism so they don’t have to say sorry to anybody for irresponsible views.
Note his revealing remark about Sharon’s ‘dying days’. If Sharon recovers, Leunig will be very unhappy..#33 percypup:
If you all start sending letters to the Age or SMH, maybe a few more letters might get in ... I understand what you’re saying, but other political interest groups are using the media to their advantage in this same way ... OK, I understand your concerns, but if we give up, other nonsensical or ill thought out ideas will get promoted ... there’s plenty of those out there … will describe in a later post …#37 stats:
The problem is that Leunig is not an imbecile, whatever his statements ... he believes in them from his point of view ... he has his own world view, which is probably different to ours, and he believes in it ... criticising him doesn’t faze him ... but I don’t know the way to rationally argue with him ... hmmm … thoughts? …Christ, what a pussy. Why can’t these leftist toads ever stand up for their scumbag ideas instead of weaseling out of them at the first challenge—and calling themselves Shakespearean? Oh, no, not me, I didn’t mean that people working in the World Trade Center were concentration camp guards, I was celebrating our shared humanity! Have a pair and stand behind your shitty little ideas, for crying out loud.
Bambifying evil
Exactly!
#11, Percypup,
Irrelevance - what have ‘hate blogs’ and ‘Cronulla’ got to do with his attack on Sharon?
With Cronulla you have the perfect epiphet which the left will use ad nauseum to refer to anglo saxon Australia.
The word ‘Cronulla’ is going to be dropped as the left’s ‘we told you so, you are all racists’.
“Leunig is beyond repair.”
Oh, I don’t know, you can sometimes work wonders with a monkey wrench and duct tape.
But I tend to agree. Such gaudy, clotted prose as Leunig delivers himself of above reflects the narcisism and self-infatuation of the true “fanatasist” (pat. pend.), and I doubt that much can be done with him. Or, to mangle Shakespeare, “Kill all the cartoonists!”
Stevo
I think we’re doing our bit outside this blog. The campaign against ‘The Guardian’ comes to mind at once. I’ve scored three letters in ‘The Age’recently - a blast against the ABC’s ghetto culture; a go at yet another fool who thought the 9/11 hijackers were ‘brave’ and a spray at terror apologist and wanker, Terry Eagleton. Strangely, I find it harder to crack ‘The Australian’. (Do I have a better chance being considered a token fascist at ‘The Age’ than competing for space with the like-minded at ‘The Australian’?)
Consider too, how much this blog is read. ‘This page has been viewed 42990 times.’ (Or have I misinterpreted?) Even Leunig indicated in his weasel-worded column that he reads Tim Blair. And who wouldn’t after you’ve tried to read your obligatory paragraph of Derrida or waded your way through the dull sanctimony and paranoia of left blogs. The devil gets the best tunes, right?
Maybe conservatives have been too quiet - it is said that we are ‘rhetorically-challenged’. No lack of that here and more and more we are speaking up against PC absurdity and nannytollah intimidation. Howard has been returned so often that the right is beginning to gain ground not just politically but culturally. (I know there’s more to than that.) You can read the gain in the recent shrill notes of hysteria we squeeze from the likes of Leunig. They’re feeling a little besieged.
It would be great if Australia could approach the the tremendous vitality and diversity of political and cultural debate in the US. For that we right of centre types have a job ahead of us. The latte mandarins can’t keep getting a free ride.
#38: I did not classify LEUNIGTIC as an imbecile, but as indulging in unresisting IMBECILITY. Syn for IMBECILIY is INSANITY. Sure, lunatics believe their own statements, they have their own world view. Examples, Hitler, the entire Iranian government, et al. As you state, criticism doesn’t faze them. That’s my point. As far as getting to them with a rational argument, or better yet, with facts. Forget it. As the old adage goes, you can’t win an argument with a lunatic.
Why can’t these leftist toads ever stand up for their scumbag ideas instead of weaseling out of them at the first challenge—and calling themselves Shakespearean?
Right on. Say what you like about the loathsome Ted Rall, at least he’s publicly unrepentant about his political views. (Bush is worse than Hitler, American soldiers are homicidal psychos who don’t deserve our support, 9/11 widows are money-grubbing whores, Daddy never loved me…)
I’m surprised the New Zealand guy got fired. The culprit cartoons seem pretty tame and run of the mill. How often do you see a political cartoon anywhere that isn’t a simplistic, ignorant, partisan cheap shot?
Posted by tim maguire on 2006 01 13 at 10:58 AM • permalinkSay what you like about the loathsome Ted Rall, at least he’s publicly unrepentant about his political views.
But even he turned self-pitying the moment anyone listened to him enough to attack him.
They need a good dose of Mencken, to see how you respond to attacks with rollicking humor. But if they had one, they might cease being lockstep lefties.
And as a humorist
Ah, so it was just a joke.
I bet Juan Cole laughed.
Posted by SoCalJustice on 2006 01 13 at 11:36 AM • permalinkLouis — He’s about as Christian as Pat Robertson.
And what does it say about this brilliant artiste that it took him, what, a week? to come up with that lame rationalization…?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 01 13 at 11:38 AM • permalink“I can almost imagine that if Sharon could have sat up from his coma and seen the cartoon, he might have approved: “Yeah, that’s me…”
I once saw a performance artist’s quote: “I seemingly don’t care.”
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 01 13 at 12:20 PM • permalinkleuing is upset that the internet has opened up the media to everyone.
that’s the great transformation that has taken place over the past 10 years with the rise of blogs and internet forums where people of all shapes and sizes can express their views without censorship.
the leftwingers no longer control the output of the media, this is why leunig is so hateful towards blogs.
but what arrogance from this demented little chimp, who thinks only he has a right to express himself in the media.
Ushie: well, I can see a use for Loonig’s cartoons on a desert island—wouldn’t you need toilet paper?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 13 at 09:15 PM • permalinkAside from those Melbournian twats who used to do the Late Show, does anybody ever actually admit liking Leunig’s cartoons?
I’ve never met a single person who did.
Posted by Mike Jericho on 2006 01 13 at 10:12 PM • permalinkThese days I am a chrome plated RWDB, with a huge gaping black spot where my heart should be, but there was a time in the 70’s that I liked Leunig’s cartoons.
They were then less politically oriented, much more philosophically inclined, and were gentle comments on human foibles and fallibility.
The garbage he is currently producing almost seems to be a bitter parody of his early work.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2006 01 13 at 11:07 PM • permalinkAren’t us RWDB’s supposed to support the right of others to express their beliefs no matter how abhorrent?
A grandchild (we were in a crowded mall at the time) once asked me what right wing and left wing meant and I told her: ‘people who are right wing believe in your right to express your beliefs out loud, people who are left wing will punish you for it.’ There was an interesting response from a couple of primary-teacher types heh.
My point, and I’m not as erudite as some here, is that Leunig is not worth the blather.#61
They were then less politically oriented, much more philosophically inclined, and were gentle comments on human foibles and fallibility.
Yes, Pedro. I liked the old Leunig, gentle and philosophical - I liked him as I liked Ashleigh Brilliant… “Appreciate me now, avoid the rush” and “I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent”.
Leunig’s website states that he’s a ‘living national treasure’ - can we rebury him now?
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2006 01 14 at 01:19 AM • permalinkLeunig’s website states that he’s a ‘living national treasure’
It also asks you if you want to leave a message to the living national treasure himself. I left one.
Lowenstein has put in he’s 2c on this :)
http://antonyloewenstein.blogspot.com/2006/01/freedom-of-expression.html
I like this bit
“Leunig’s critics seem to be saying that he’s virulently anti-Western, anti-Israel and anti-Australian (as if that’s a crime in itself.)”
So he not only doesnt like being Jewish…he aint that fond of being Australian. It must suck to hate who you are and where you live. :)
Aren’t us RWDB’s supposed to support the right of others to express their beliefs no matter how abhorrent?
You support that right by not imprisoning them for their abhorrence.
You do not have to tacitly approve of their abhorrence by maintaining silence.
Everybody has a right to make asses of themselves. The rest of us have the right to call them asses. Censure is not censorship.
Censure vs. censor.
Conflating the difference between those two words/concepts is one of the pillars of the suicidal sappyheaded worldview. It’s where lefties reflexively lose the plot…And the debate.
Whenever I’ve been accused of “censoring” their <screech>right</screech> to broadcast their idiocy in a debate, I grab a dictionary and let it inform them of how done for they’ve rendered their credibility. It’s almost as effective as catching them in an outright lie face to [lost] face. (NOTE: Best done in the precence of a group of observing peers)
Furthermore, the belief that we’ve got to “support the right of others to express their beliefs no matter how abhorrent” goes a long way toward explaining why lefties, in effect, lease out their wholehearted “support” to so much that is evil in this world.
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I love how he says:
What is it with antisemites and their Jewish friends?