Tuesday, February 14, 2006
LEUNIG LATEST
Michael Leunig, prankishly entered in an Iranian newspaper’s mock-the-Holocaust cartoon contest, continues whining:
JON FAINE: Do you think you might know who’s behind the hoax? Don’t name anybody, but have you got in your mind any theories?
MICHAEL LEUNIG: Um, yes I’ve had a few emails recently, kind of anonymous emails, you know, taunting me to enter this competition, saying come on, you’d be a natural, said one of them. You know, these taunts come at me all the time and, look, it could be any number of people.
There are a number of columnists and bloggers who have been particularly hateful to me for quite a long time and have suggested all sorts of hurtful and hateful things towards me. And you know, the mind jumps towards all these kinds of people. But I must refrain from imagining anybody in particular. It could be, it could be a kid.
It could be, it could be a duck! Or any other of the vicious entities whom Leunig never names! Nigel Henham, The Age’s communications director, says his stupid newspaper is absolutely appalled:
Well, The Age is absolutely appalled, as is Michael Leunig, that someone would choose to fraudulently use some of his work, and also represent his words that are simply not his. This is a serious hoax, someone has acted fraudulently, and we are quite appalled by it, quite frankly.
Appalled. Got it. Absolutely. Let’s hear from Leunig himself, in a piece bearing the modest headline Amid the pain, God puts his hand on my shoulder:
After my dinner on Monday evening the telephone rang and the senior deputy editor of The Age asked me if I had made a submission to the Iranian holocaust cartoon competition.
The senior deputy editor of The Age didn’t immediately realise this to be a prank. Hmm.
There is a moment of confusion that is almost religious as the mind tumbles about grasping for meaning and reference points but really, you are in free-fall at this moment and the stomach feels weightless for a time as you descend suddenly into the special underworld where you now must spend some unscheduled time.
Just exactly what did you eat for dinner, Michael?
This is what happens when the fact slams into me that I have been secretly and maliciously set up and framed and that the story will soon be on the wire and the twisting and distorting of my life is about to become extreme and that the consequences for me and my family could be dire.
Oh, right. Vengeful cartooniacs want to destroy Leunig’s life. Imagine how spooked this boy might have been if The Age had published certain Danish motoons.
What I had wanted to do was go out into the peaceful garden with my children and the dogs, to smell the fragrant evening air drifting in from the bush like a great consoling anthem, and to hear the kookaburras settling down for the night and the parrots chattering their way home and to watch the ibises rising slowly from the dry grass to their roosts high in the giant old eucalyptus skeleton that towers over the paddock that runs down to the dark treeline. This is something I believe in.
Personally, I don’t believe in children, dogs, air, kookaburras, night, parrots, grass, or paddocks. And especially ibises. But if Leunig wants to base his life around these otherworldly concepts, well, good for him.
You see, I’ve had more than a gutful of hostility and hate mail in the past three years, all because I have resisted the rise of fascism - the idea of war.
Yet Leunig urged us to pray for Osama bin Laden, who doesn’t share Leunig’s resistance to war. In fact, he begins war, and is a fascist.
I can identify with the Von Trapps, particularly so tonight; they meant well but got a hell of a hiding for it and were forced to flee. But they sang so beautifully, so harmoniously. In their own way they made sense of the chaos in the world around.
Expect Julie Andrews to be a prime witness in Leunig’s case against his wicked hoaxster.
Sleep came but then faltered about 3am, so I rose in the solemnity of this grim hour and wandered out into the brilliant moonlight to see if God was out there in the paddock somewhere. Yes, God is there.
I was awake at the same hour with a screaming sinus headache. Yes, pseudoephidrine was there.
I wandered back inside and in a reckless moment I opened the laptop lying on the kitchen table and went to the Iranian website. Lo and behold, the cartoon and the fake words were gone and God came in from the paddock and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
God edits Iranian cartoon sites?
An email popped open; it was the Iranians. They were courteously apologising, they had been co-operative. They cared.
They are GOD!
Somewhere the perpetrator of the hoax rubs his hands with glee, just as arsonists do. Tonight I will water the garden.
You do that, Michael. Water your little head off. Hey, looks like The Age has a lead on the pro-war monsters who may have perpetrated this Godless arsonist hoax:
Age lawyer Peter Bartlett, from Minter Ellison, said a phone number connected to the email sent to Hamshahri was connected to the satirical website The Chaser, although this did not mean that people connected to The Chaser had sent it.
Julian Morrow, writer, performer and executive producer of the television satire The Chaser, said that he knew nothing about the matter and “it’s nothing to do with the television show”.
This is getting more interesting by the minute.
(An earlier post on the Leunig lunacy is here; editorial and comment from The Australian here and here.)