Wednesday, February 15, 2006
GAWENDA GETS IT
Former Age editor-in-chief Michael Gawenda launches into duck-witted cartoonist Michael Leunig:
In the article published in The Age, Leunig says nothing at all about this competition, how vile it is, how racist, how it shocked him that anyone would ever think that he would have anything to do with such an outrageous campaign.
The journalist who interviewed Leunig characterises the competition as one designed to “find a cartoon on the Holocaust insulting to Jews”. This is a downright depressing way to characterise this competition, for it isn’t a “Jewish” issue, a matter that concerns only Jews, just as any form of racism is not just an offence against the people against whom it is directed.
But there is nothing from Leunig on all this, not even a moment’s reflection on the fact that the competition’s organisers thought his cartoon—which is not a hoax—was a perfectly fine entry for this racist exercise.
Indeed, Leunig goes out of his way to praise the Iranians who were “courteously apologising, they had been co-operative. They cared.”
Read the whole thing; Gawenda was, of course, the Age boss who rejected Leunig’s cartoon in 2002 (by the way, how hard to please is Leunig? His cartoon doesn’t get published, so he bitches that “Michael Gawenda just didn’t get it”. The same cartoon does get published, and he demands it be removed. Make up your damn mind, woolhead). Subsequent to that courteous climb-down from his caring Iranian pals, Leunig received a second apology:
Editor of the Chaser website Dominic Knight admitted a writer “acting alone” one night sent in the cartoon to Iran’s biggest-selling newspaper Hamshahri which is holding a contest asking for people to send in cartoons of the Holocaust ...
“He (the website writer) has spoken to Mr Leunig and I understand Mr Leunig accepted his apology,” Mr Knight said.
The writer, Richard Cooke, says Leunig “mainly seemed to be relieved that it wasn’t a neo-con pressure group who had posted the cartoon”. So, with all these apologies flying around, shouldn’t one be made to the aggrieved pro-war neo-con blogger-columnist community? For days we’ve suffered Leunig’s cruel slurs as he sought to blame the pro-war lobby and columnists for this Holocaust scam. “It’s part of a political campaign,” the cartoonist alleged, without foundation. Why, he even told the ABC:
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.
We are innocent, you mind-jumping McCarthyite smear machine. Apologise at once. Or thousands of ducks—yes, the precious ducks you love so much—will pay for your crime with their blood, beaks, and feathers.
This holy directive—a quackwa, if you will—shall remain in place until our demand is met.
UPDATE. No apology yet from Michael; let the killing begin! Stuart Rintoul and former Leunig friend Piers Akerman have new reports.