Monday, February 13, 2006
GLOBAL LEUNIG
It’s international Michael Leunig mania! The celebrated Australian peacenik’s entry in an Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest—in fact, Leunig’s work was submitted by a prankish Leunig activist—has won worldwide notice, from Le Monde to the Sydney Morning Herald:
Renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig has submitted the first entry in a controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust launched in Iran today in a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the prophet Mohammed that have enraged Muslims worldwide.
"As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the Holocaust,” Leunig was quoted as saying on Irancartoons.com, the website organising the competition with Iran’s biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri, triggering outrage in the US and Germany in particular.
Leunig has also earned coverage in the European Jewish Press, Islam Online (love the pic!), Melbourne’s Herald Sun, the Middle East Times, and South Africa’s News 24.
Well done, Michael! In other Leunig news, the Euroa Gazette reports he recently drew a large cartoon in opposition to a waste disposal facility planned for Violet Town.
UPDATE. The fun is over:
Renowned The Age cartoonist Michael Leunig says a cartoon apparently submitted in his name to an Iranian newspaper seeking entries on the theme of the Holocaust is a fake.
Leunig has demanded that the cartoon and words written under his name be removed from an Iranian web site.
UPDATE II. Items falling for the Leunig prank also ran in Bahrain, China, and Italy—although the latter has since been withdrawn.
UPDATE III. Leunig and his newspaper are extremely concerned:
Mr Leunig said he first heard that some of his cartoons had been submitted to the competition following a call from a concerned executive at The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
"I learnt last night that some of my cartoons from a few years back have been submitted as an entry in that competition,” Mr Leunig told ABC radio.
"The Age is extremely concerned because The Age newspaper was also mentioned on the website (Irancartoons.com),” he said.
Ha! The Age earlier ran the same wire item as everyone else, announcing that Leunig had entered the Holocaust contest. Maybe they’ll sue themselves.
UPDATE IV. Leunig is a victim of war:
Mr Leunig says the email may have come from Australia and he is dismayed by what is a hurtful act.
"I’ve been set up horribly, maliciously and to me it denotes what it means to stand up against this conflict and this warlike sort of state the world is in and you know, it’s difficult,” he said.
UPDATE V. Incidentally, the line above from The Age—that the submitted Leunig cartoon was fake—is wrong. The cartoon was genuine.
UPDATE VI. Leunig is hot on the trail of his hoaxer:
The artist said he had “various theories” about who submitted the work but preferred to go no further. However, he said he suspected involvement by the “pro-war lobby ... to discredit me”.
Interesting tactic; discrediting someone by submitting their unmodified work.
"There’s been a number of columnists who are always inciting people to act against me and I’ve always been really perturbed about that,” he said.
"You can shrug it off but it’s a worry when you’re on the receiving end and I don’t bear those people very much good will.
"This is part of a long series of grinding, malicious attacks I get in the mail, on email, in columns. I’ve taken an anti-war position, as I did in the Vietnam War and now in the Iraq war. If you take that position you end up on the end of a hell of a lot of malice (and) ill-will.
"I’ve found ... pro-war people in this country have been very vicious and peronal in their attacks, dirty tricks and campaigns against individuals. I don’t think the same has happened from the anti-war side."
Australia’s Shakespeare sounds like he needs a hug. Of course, what must really be eating at Leunig is that a Holocaust-mocking contest instantly accepted his cartoon, and that the global press found such a circumstance so plausible.