Monday, March 19, 2007
SCHOOLBOY CRUSH RECALLED
Melbourne Age cartoonist and fish in a barrel Michael Leunig hits back:
It has come to my notice that there is an impressive number of columnists, intellectuals and commentators - mostly serious, highly educated men, who spend much time studying and much energy proclaiming my depraved leftism, carefully combing through my words and my drawings of little ducks, looking for contradictions and moral tumours with a passion and diligence that would seem beyond the call of duty.
Actually, Mike, we mainly do it for laughs - your cartoons long ago having ceded that role. By the way, you’re missing a dash in the above sentence.
Dare I say it, but they appear to be deeply fascinated with me, although I’m not sure that it’s an entirely healthy interest, so feverish and unresolved is their attention. This is not a nice thought, but sometimes this fixation even reminds me of a morbid and steamy schoolboy crush.
Any particular one? Leunig left school more than 40 years ago. Get over it, Mike!
The signs of obsession, jealousy and fetishism are all there in their writings about me, and there is also evidence of some fierce, kinky desire to strip me naked and administer humiliation ...
Now, when you run a line like that, it’s probably not the smartest move a couple of paragraphs on to expose the fierce, kinky humiliation you wish upon your enemies. But nobody said Leunig was very smart:
Oh, but alas bold knights, the sedge is fast withering from the lake and no birds sing - you see, there’s a fair chance that the surgeon or the paramedic upon whom you may be depending before too long, or the nurse who may be wiping your incontinent bottom sooner than you think, or the fireman who may be cutting you out of your mangled vehicle next week, may actually be one of your “naive, bleeding-heart leftists” and will that matter when it’s your turn for hand wringing?
I’ll take my chances with those folk, Mike. But if ever I’m in desperate need for a drawing of a duck ... man, am I ever in trouble, eh?
(Via Nick G.)