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Last updated on August 6th, 2017 at 07:08 am
The Age’s Michael Leunig gets all high and mighty about Iraq:
[T]he rape of Iraq: the most abominable public tragedy and collective moral nightmare I have felt in my lifetime; an atrocity of such fiendish cowardice and cruelty, and of such gargantuan destructive idiocy, in which my dear country and various of my colleagues had been complicit.
Remember, this is the same guy who urged us to pray for Osama following 9/11. Mike apparently wasn’t aware of that day’s “fiendish cowardice and cruelty”. It’s a short step for Leunig to move from profound thoughts on Iraq to deep musings about violins and muesli:
My dear friend Richard Tognetti appeared before me recently one sunny morning by the water in Sydney, his shirt awry, a bag of muesli in one hand and a Del Gesu violin valued at $10 million in the other.
“What do you hear?” he said a little later as he lifted this small, ancient assembly of wood and catgut to offer me a tender moment from the Sibelius violin concerto. When finished, he repeated the question with a child’s face of intense curiosity.
“What do you hear?”
Spellbound, thoughtless and still resonating, I at once proclaimed, “It’s exquisitely primal … and raw in the divine sense. I felt it more than I heard it – it’s utterly truthful. It’s like muesli!”
“That’s it,” cried Richard excitedly. “You’ve got it!”
This is beyond parody.
- Pretty ironic to refer to the “rape” of a country that prior to its liberation, was led by a tyrant who employed at least one man with “violator of women’s honor” printed on his business card.Posted by Ed Driscoll on 2007 03 24 at 02:51 PM • permalink
- But Ed, who are we to judge another’s culture?
/leuniduck
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 03 24 at 03:04 PM • permalink
- Certifiable.Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 03 24 at 03:18 PM • permalink
- If anyone referred to a performance of mine as like muesli I’d kick him so hard he’d be wearing his balls like Micky Mouse ears,
Words and music alike fail me to describe this pretentious putz. God’s in his personal pasture, jews are nazis. Sibelius is a source of breakfast fibre… what a monumental asshat.
- Mikey needs to lay off the magic mushrooms.Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 03 24 at 03:43 PM • permalink
- “This is beyond parody.”
Actually, you have to go beyond parody several miles, then take a left on that little dirt road, cross the creek and work your way up the canyon just around the bend from the sand pit. There you might find the location of Michael Leunig’s fevered brain – if it hasn’t already scraped and crawled its way further into the intellectual wilderness.
- On Slate, there’s an article about the hostile New Age takeover of Yoga. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.Posted by rightwingprof on 2007 03 24 at 04:19 PM • permalink
- In Melbourne, Tovarish Leunig is the third person people supply to the question: who’d you like to sit next to on a plane?
First two are the Dalai Lama and Mandela.Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2007 03 24 at 04:24 PM • permalink
- I’ll never be able to eat muesli again.Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2007 03 24 at 04:34 PM • permalink
- “It’s exquisitely primal … and raw in the divine sense. I felt it more than I heard it – it’s utterly truthful. It’s like muesli!”
The Holy Spirit. Nirvana. Moksha. The Great Spirit. Ahura, Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom. And muesli.
Is this worthless son of a bitch going to start worshipping muesli, as well as ducks?
Don’t ducks eat muesli?
- Hmmm.
Ummm… just out of curiosity, what is muesli?
Believe it or not but it’s a kind of granola.
The breakfast cereal. You eat with a spoon. In a bowl.
Unlike these idiots who happen to goof around with the stuff along with expensive violins.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 03 24 at 04:50 PM • permalink
- Michael Leunig is the most abominable public tragedy and collective moral nightmare I have felt in my lifetime.
He is an atrocity of such fiendish cowardice and cruelty, and of such gargantuan destructive idiocy, I find it difficult to believe that my dear country and various of my colleagues have been complicit.
(Just had to change a few words.)
- Forget Leunig. Forget the obvious Muslix jokes. That someone so profoundly retarded as Richard Tognetti should have possession of a Del Gesu is simply obscene. Those idiots live in a world without time, where sound collides with color, and shadows explode. The disconnect from anything with any semblance of reality is complete and irreversible.
And these idiots think – really think – that they should direct public policy. Talk about a “feck deficit dissorder.”
Jeez Louise.
- To think that this Leunig character actually gets this crap published, amazes me. Really though, this is real fodder for an enterprising comedy script writer.
The real tragedy is, people like Leunig, actually believe the crap they write and worse still, they think they are some ‘Sage’ to the rest of humanity. At least he would not need any of ol’ Dick Tognetti’s Muesli to stay regular, just reading some of the crap he has produced over the years, should cover that area.
- I’ve always likened solo string performances to Zesty Cheese Cheetos, myself.Posted by Crispytoast on 2007 03 24 at 05:14 PM • permalink
- “The rape of Iraq: the most abominable public tragedy and collective moral nightmare …, an atrocity of such fiendish cowardice and cruelty, and of such gargantuan destructive idiocy…”
I don’t know about the complicit part, but hey, the guy’s right! After all, where else have you seen people blowing themselves up along with their own countrymen, women and children included, instead of attacking the foreign invaders? And all for 72 virgins, booze and all the forbidden food you can eat…
Posted by ElectronPower on 2007 03 24 at 05:28 PM • permalink
- ‘Del Gesu’? What a pseud. ‘Guarneri’ is sufficient.
Pseuds such as Leunig couldn’t tell the difference between a Cremona violin and a Chinese student violin – either appearance or sound. Fact is, several blind tests over the years have shown world-class violinists cannot reliably tell the difference between a Cremona violin and a first-class modern instrument, either in sound or when playing. In many cases the modern instruments were preferred.
Cremona violins are expensive because (i) they are in limited supply and (2) collectors have certain beliefs about them, often unjustified, not because they are superior musical instruments.
Posted by walterplinge on 2007 03 24 at 05:33 PM • permalink
- Reading Leunig’s piece had me wondering just exactly which hallucinogenic drugs he was tripping on. Cheech and Chong couldn’t improve on Leunig.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 03 24 at 05:55 PM • permalink
- My sister the artist took me to see a Rembrandt and asked me what I thought. “It’s like…Doritos!” “That’s it!” she cried!Posted by dean martin on 2007 03 24 at 06:10 PM • permalink
- “What do you hear?” he said a little later as he lifted this small, ancient assembly of wood and catgut…”
I’m sorry, I’m confused. Is he talking about the violin or the meusli here?
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 24 at 06:17 PM • permalink
- “It’s exquisitely primal … and raw in the divine sense. I felt it more than I heard it – it’s utterly truthful. It’s like muesli!”
I should read further before posting. This wanker has answered my question.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 24 at 06:19 PM • permalink
- #18 nor listen to Sibelius – mind you, this wasn’t a life-threatening habit of mine.Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 24 at 06:23 PM • permalink
- #30 – walterplinge: don’t forget the feeling to play an instruments with some history behind it; something hand-crafted by a master and not something that was churned out by the thousand in a factory. The end result (sound) might be the same, but there’s a big difference in how you feel when you play it.
Like driving a classic car – it still moves you from point a to point b, but there’s more to it than transportation.
- Nice breakfast, fuckheadPosted by Jack from Montreal on 2007 03 24 at 06:41 PM • permalink
He played Sibelius on a bag of muesli!?! Impressive
Actually, he used the bag of muesli to sap the poor bastard who really owned the fiddle when he mugged him…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 24 at 06:53 PM • permalink
- walterplinge—I’ll bet The Devil Goes to Georgia or Granuialle Goes Walking sound very nice on either one.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 24 at 06:55 PM • permalink
- `… my dear country and various of my colleagues had been complicit.’
Really? I never knew that the Land of the Sugar Plum Fairies, and Flopsy, Mopsy & Cottontail, were part of the Coalition of the Willing. I didn’t even know that combat boots came in such small sizes. Tch, you learn something new every day.
- Leave the Dminor concerto alone, Leunig, you’re not worthy.
For years I had trouble with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy because of some dumbed-down version I had to learn as kid, so whenever I heard it later, I’d also hear in my mind this stupid jingle “Ode to Joy is taken from a symphony by Beethoven…” Arrrgh!
And the Lone Ranger has a lot to answer for when it comes to Rossini’s William Tell Overture, too! Still, at least it doesn’t make you think of breakfast cereal.
Sibelius on a Del Gesu = muslei. Yeah.
- This Leunig person—is he under psychiatric care? Well he should be.
Harry: I’ll never be able to eat muesli again—without giggling.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 03 24 at 07:47 PM • permalink
- “What do you hear?”, said Richard as he let rip a classic dry one, as Clive would describe. Michael was hard of hearing, a result of some unknown medical complaint that was also affecting his sight and mind. So he gestured Richard to do it again. Richard obliged, this time with a sound unlike a low octave violin note held and then fading off to silence. Michael suddenly smiled and said, “Muesli!”
Now it was Michael’s turn to drop his pants and for Richard to place a ear to Michael’s buttocks …
<to be continued>
- Are Leuning’s writings leftist porn?
My dear friend Richard Tognetti appeared before me in a dream recently, glorious in his tumescance recently one sunny morning by the water in Sydney, his shirt awry exposing his flaccid muscles, mmmmmmm, a bag of muesli in one hand and a tube of KY gel with a Del Gesu violin valued at $10 million in the other .
“What do you hear?” he said a little later as he lifted this small, ancient assembly of wood and catgut to offer me a tender moment from the Sibelius violin concerto.Only your name I replied
When finished, he repeated the question with a child’s face of intense curiosity.
“What do you hear?” (Is this whose your daddy for lefteratti?)
Spellbound, thoughtless and still resonating, I at once proclaimed, “It’s exquisitely primal … and raw in the divine sense. I felt it more than I heard it – it’s utterly truthful. It’s like muesli!”
“That’s it,” cried Richard excitedly. “You’ve got it!” He moaned.
I feel dirty now reading this.
- I watched Children of Men the other day. It was largely uninteresting and lame, and mostly disappointing after all the hype, much like an unopened jar of pickles in the cupboard.Posted by Crispytoast on 2007 03 24 at 09:12 PM • permalink
- As Tim said, it’s beyond parody. Leunig is Kelsey Grammer’s Frazier character multiplied by 10. Name dropping, elitism and food snobbery all happening on Australia’s most expensive real estate (by the water in Sydney).
As for Leunig’s comment about the war in Iraq being the greatest tragedy of his lifetime, this has to be seen from his perspective. It is a war that has cost the lives too many of America’s enemies and not enough lives of its citizens or its allies.
- I saw the other day the a US serviceman was being busted for a rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family.
Bad shit, and if he did it he, and any of the others involved, should really cop a big stretch.
What WAS significant is that the MSM type writing the article stated that this was ‘one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq war’
These people (Leunig and his ilk) seem to filter out the market bombings, the midnight torture squads, the snuff videos, the kids in car bombs and all the other disgusting crap that the ratbags are inflicting on the unfortunate Iraqis who are just trying to make their way in the world.
Sure, if coalition boys commit CRIMINAL acts, bust ‘em. But where the HELL did the perspective go????
- #23 I think we have a winner at #51.Posted by dean martin on 2007 03 24 at 09:42 PM • permalink
- [T]he rape of Iraq: the most abominable public tragedy and collective moral nightmare I have felt in my lifetime; an atrocity of such fiendish cowardice and cruelty, and of such gargantuan destructive idiocy, in which my dear country and various of my colleagues had been complicit.
LOL.
Aint it funny how these left-wing turds don’t rank their complicity in, and encouragement of, the South-East Asian holocaust of the 70s in their hit parade of abominations, tragedies, nightmares, atrocities, cruelties and destructions? We should dispense with the more civilised accoutrements of polemic and now tell it like it is: the Western left wants as many Iraqis as possible to be killed by terrorists because they hate Bush.
- #345, actually, I am trying to work out the bit where “in which my dear country and various of my colleagues had been complicit.” Does he mean Australia aligned with the islamofascists?
Unless of course, he was referring to the Balmain type part of the country and the ‘my colleagues’ bit refers to GLF and associated fellow travelers……
- #62
Absolutely right, Cee dot Ell.
We hear the chants of “Iraq another Viet Nam” I just want to throw up because they do not accept the guilt they deserve for all those who were oppressed, killed or expelled by the regimes that took over after the USA was forced to leave by these lefties.
They go blank when I tell them THEY are responsible for the boat people.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 24 at 10:59 PM • permalink
- #55 Crspytoast,
much like an unopened jar of pickles in the cupboard.
I am contorting myself to imagine the something in an unopened jar. Shirley, I have to open iot to taste it?.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 03 24 at 11:03 PM • permalink
- #44
Wonder if he would compare “The adoration of the Maggi” to a flock of ducks passing overhead?
Funny enough – unlike Leunig since the 70’s – “The Adoration of the Magpie” was a Leunig cartoon collected in the 1974 ‘The Penguin Leunig’. There’s not a duck in sight but it does have a magpie looking on a Nativity scene.
- We the girls here at Blair News (Blair news it’s gutsy and it’s good) would like to give Wimpy Canadian a new second nic. name.
If you enter our competition, you could win this bew-dee-full painting by me, yes me, 1.618.
It’s a masterpiece worth $56,900
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(Remember, to cut and paste it and hang it if you’re the winner.)
To get the competition underway, here’s my entry….
“The mean dream wimpy machine” or how about “Hot Maple syrup canadian man”.Entries close this thursday in this post.
Be quick to win this beaut prize…
- “Who’d you like to sit next to on a plane?”
Leunig would be on my list somewhere after Mohammed Atta.
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2007 03 24 at 11:27 PM • permalink
- hope y’all don’t mind, but i feel it necessary to get all primal & raw here, maybe even exquisitely so.
it’s not enough that the guy has to be a pretentious twat; nor a name-dropping wanker. no, i think beyond all that, the guy’s just another flippin’ lying dog. trying to look important & meaningful by telling whoppers.
why? why would i think such an unkind thought about a gentle, beautiful soul like ol’ shit-for-brains?
let us recap: SFB walkin’ “by the sunny water in sydney”, when his oh-so-famous friend happens along, shirt awry and undoubtedly barefoot, like all famous people who want to make sure everyone knows they don’t care a whit about being famous. got a bag of cereal in one hand, a violin & (presumably) a bow in the other. with me so far?
i would imagine sydney beaches no more have benches or tables placed at waters edge than american beaches do. so! beach; water; famous dude, carryin’ cereal & violin.
here’s where it all falls apart: *to eat the cereal*, he’s gotta set the $10 MM violin down on the beach: sand, saltwater, seagull poop. not too likely. to *play the violin*, he’s gotta set the cereal down. sand, etc. again, not too likely.
what kind of idiot does that? might this encounter, so rich in big words and highly unlikely scenarios, be an *imaginary* encounter? i’m just sayin’, is all.
Posted by jimmy quest on 2007 03 24 at 11:30 PM • permalink
- Dear God. This man gets paid for this?
Spellbound, thoughtless and still resonating, I at once proclaimed, “It’s exquisitely primal … and raw in the divine sense. I felt it more than I heard it – it’s utterly truthful. It’s like a crapped-out diaper!” (that would be “nappy” for those of you Down Under)
“That’s it,” cried Richard excitedly. “You’ve got it!”
- Forget Muesli.
Those Korngold flakes helps start the day. I never leave a Crumb. Took a walk in the park, stopped by the zoo to see the Byrd enclosure and say hi to the Gibbons. On to the markets for a bit of veggie shopping: Beethoven, Boccherini, a couple of Canteloubes.
Stopped by the local for a Glass of Meyerbeer – what Bliss! You can keep your Agricola.
Then on to the Boulanger for some fresh Leclairs. Quick visit to the Barber. Ran into Jacques Ibert and his brother Ted. Blow me down, they’re both off the booze, and since that typhoid scare, nought but Boieldieu.
Back home, put the feet up for a while on the Lalo in the back garden, then into the kitchen to whip up a nice Pork Satie for dinner. That should keep the Wolf from the door.
- You can tell that vocabulary isn’t Leunig’s strong point. “Rape” is a particularly strong word and he obviously doesn’t realise what its meaning is.
Hence, he should keep to drawing pictures since he has never opened a dictionary. But even his pictures are crap.
He is a fucking anti-Semite who should go live in Iran and fuck off out of this country. This country needs fewer people like him.
Posted by The Best Infidel on 2007 03 24 at 11:54 PM • permalink
- rape of Iraq: the most abominable public tragedy and collective moral nightmare I have felt in my lifetime
Wikipedia says he was born on June 2nd 1945. That is, not yesterday.
I guess what he’s saying is that if he, personally, doesn’t have bad feelings about a “public tragedy” or “moral nightmare” then as far as he’s concerned it’s neither.
Geeze! Talk about infantile, self-referential, egomaniacal, moral imbecility.
- From Loonies site,
You see a society that’s provided for by television is a society that says it doesn’t need too many parks or natural situations for children to play in because television will look after them. So I think we, we start to construct the shape of our cities and our suburbs is built around this fact that people can be taken care of, they can be plonked in a room and absorbed in this virtual reality and reality itself becomes kind of a little bit degraded. I have a sense that it is mad making somewhere. That the quality of attention we give to each other as humans is degraded and diminished eventually with the sustained cultural usage” WTF???
- Hmmm.
I think everyone on this blog has completely missed the point!!
The point?
We now know precisely who to mug to get a $10 violin!
Posted by memomachine on 2007 03 25 at 12:36 AM • permalink
- Hmmm.
And breakfast!
All at the same time.
Quite a time saver really.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 03 25 at 12:37 AM • permalink
- Haranton—here in CA we have a tree-hugger who protests whale-watching cruises, saying if parents want to show their kids whales they can stay home and see them on a CD…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 25 at 12:40 AM • permalink
- All that bolding was just too much like muesli.Posted by Crispytoast on 2007 03 25 at 12:50 AM • permalink
- The guy mentioned in this article seems to’ve been making a muesli metaphor as well. (The discussion in comments is priceless, too—owlbear spins like a top).
- The guy mentioned in this article seems to’ve been making a muesli metaphor as well. (The discussion in comments is priceless—owlbear spins like a top).
- Hmmm.
Arrrrghh!
We now know precisely who to mug to get a $10 million dollar violin!
PIMF.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 03 25 at 01:40 AM • permalink
- My dear friend Richard Tognetti appeared before me recently one sunny morning by the water in Sydney, his shirt awry, a Big Mac in one hand and a Sony discman valued at $200 in the other.
“What do you hear?” he said a little later as he lifted this small assembly of plastic and circuitry to offer me a moment from Led Zepplin IV. When finished, he repeated the question with a child’s face of intense curiosity.
“What do you hear?”
Spellbound, thoughtless and still resonating, I at once proclaimed, “It’s exquisitely primal … and raw in the divine sense. I felt it more than I heard it – it’s utterly truthful. It’s like a Big Mac!”
“That’s it,” cried Richard excitedly. “You’ve got it!”
This is beyond parody.No it’s not.
- It’s easy to know when Leunig’s about to pop out one of those articles as mentioned above – watch for the pallet-sized delivery of hand lotion to his door. The article will appear in the Age a few days later, reg’lar as clockwork.Posted by James Waterton on 2007 03 25 at 02:47 AM • permalink
- Somehow I doubt the violin was worth 10 million.
The most expensive one Ive been able to find is about $3.5 millionAlso check out
http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/expensive92.html
Posted by Rachel Corrie’s Flatmate on 2007 03 25 at 03:29 AM • permalink
- *Sigh* (reaches up to turn off bold) That’s better. And by the way, here in Australia, the bold switch turns on ‘down’, OK? Loonig’s story is wanky enough to be true, but when Tognetti was first given that violin, my thought was what a burden it would be in terms of security and insurance. And now we find he’s walking around Sydney with it under his arm? And it’s worth (Dr. Evil voice) Ten million dollars!! mwhahaha!
- Looking at my Australian Chamber Orchestra CDs, it appears Richard Tognetti’s violin is a Guadagnini, owned by the Commonwealth Bank and lent to him on a semi-permanent basis. According to Wikipedia, some of Guadagnini’s violins have fetched up to one million dollars.
In any case, it seems highly unlikely that Richard Tognetti takes this violin around on casual visits. Personally, I suspect that much of this happening took place only in Leunig’s imagination.
- Achillea: what is funny about the comment thread in the article you linked to is the increasingly exasperated statements of the Portland Tribune people confirming that the incidents talked about in the editorial (the effigy burning and the public defecating) really happened and they do have photographs.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 03 25 at 07:47 AM • permalink
- PS: WTF is an “owlbear”? A hairy gay man who wears glasses?Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 03 25 at 07:50 AM • permalink
- Muesli is the last refuge of a scoundrel.Posted by Some0Seppo on 2007 03 25 at 11:01 AM • permalink
- Hmmmm.
It’s a creature from one of the D&D worlds. Half owl, half bear. Uh…. so I hear. From my, uh… nerdy friends…
Sorry but you just failed your saving throw so nobody believes that was from your “nerdy friends”.
Now I’m going to roll to see if you have a random encounter … oops, rolled a 20 so let’s see now according to the chart …
You encounter Michael Leunig, he’s wearing tights, got a moose knuckle going on and is wielding a +3 bag of muesli and a rolled up copy of The Age.
You’re surprised, he’s got initiative and so you’re totally screwed …
Posted by memomachine on 2007 03 25 at 02:44 PM • permalink
- Apostic—roll against IQ for being anywhere Leunig would be in the first place. Oh, too bad…Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 03 25 at 08:10 PM • permalink
- “…and to see my work as nourishing rather than mocking or hurtful.”
Boy, times sure have changed …
Posted by carpefraise on 2007 03 25 at 11:19 PM • permalink
- place where Ned [Kelly] took in sustenance and music after having robbed the local bank.
Hmm, could this sustenance have been muesli?
After robbing banks you need a serious carb infusion you know!Posted by carpefraise on 2007 03 25 at 11:30 PM • permalink
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He played Sibelius on a bag of muesli!?! Impressive!