Mood:
loudTopic: big media
This cartoon above ran on ABC Insiders on 31 October 2010:
They are by David Pope, also referred to in this report:
Pope honoured as Cartoonist of the Year
Posted
Canberra cartoonist David Pope has won one of Australia's top cartooning honours, taking out the 2010 Cartoonist of the Year Award in Melbourne last night.
He beat five other finalists to take home the top award.
Pope has been drawing cartoons for the alternative press in Australia since the mid-1980s and for The Canberra Times since 2008.
He says former Canberra Times cartoonist Geoff Pryor created the space in the paper for his brand of political cartooning.
"I've been very lucky to follow in the footsteps of Geoff Pryor at the Canberra Times, who really created the space at the paper where you are given free rein to make political comment about the news of the day and social events," he said.
"It's a terrific space to have and he created that space in the paper over 30 years."
Over to Insiders comment here:
JASON CHATFIELD: Yes, oh it was a godsend, incredible. It was a slow news day and then just a shoe flew in and every cartoonist in the country stood up and applauded.
There's two reasons that I'm excited that John Howard is back on the scene. One of them is that I get to draw John Howard again.
The other one is that I get to hear Mike Bowers do a John Howard impersonation.
MICHAEL BOWERS (in John Howard voice): Oh not tonight!
JASON CHATFIELD (in John Howard voice): Oh stop it Mike, yeah!
(Referring to Paul Zanetti's cartoon, www.zanetti.net.au):
MICHAEL BOWERS: The shoe throwing incident just gave so many visual metaphors and visual puns for you guys. It was just fantastic.
JASON CHATFIELD: It was amazing. Yeah we've got a Zanetti here with "three shoes?" and then Tony Jones here saying, "Oh the third one is from Costello."
Very good. I'm surprised it's an actual shoe and not a fluffy slipper or something.
(Referring to Jason Chatfield's cartoon, jasonchatfield.com):
MICHAEL BOWERS: You've picked up on it as well.
JASON CHATFIELD: I did. Yeah I mean it was just the fact that that week it got so much press for the book.
He's written everything that's happened to him and then this happens.
And you know I can imagine him just sort of sitting there thinking, oh "Damn, I could have put that in the book."
MICHAEL BOWERS: If they go to a second printing I'm sure it will be in the book.
JASON CHATFIELD: There'll be an addendum yeah, Lazarus writing still.
MICHAEL BOWERS: Me and the shoe.
JASON CHATFIELD: Lazarus reeling.
(Referring to David Pope's cartoon in the Canberra Times):
MICHAEL BOWERS: David Pope from the Canberra Times has really gone for the jugular.
JASON CHATFIELD: Yes. This is one of the sharpest gags I've seen all week.
MICHAEL BOWERS: "The legacy resurrected."
"Sorry is this a bad time?" coming from the skull as they pour out of the Iraq War with the Wikileaks man opening the door on it.
JASON CHATFIELD: This is such a good cartoon. And he's just hit it straight on the head.
The deeply cynical attempts to smear Assange of Wikileaks in the big media remind of the devastating critique of some in the big media - like Fox News today - in a re-run of the 1986 Olive Stone movie Salvador whitewashing massive fatalities by a right wing dictator convenient to the USA fascist influence in Central America.
Director Oliver Stone, a Vietnam War veteran, talks about the movie here:
The movie cast included such notables as:
- James Woods as Richard Boyle
- Jim Belushi as Doctor Rock
- Michael Murphy Ambassador Thomas Kelly
- John Savage as John Cassady
- Elpidia Carrillo as María
- Cindy Gibb as Cathy Moore
- Tony Plana as Major Maximiliano 'Max' Casanova
- Colby Chester as Jack Morgan- State Department Analyst
- Will MacMillan as Colonel Bentley Hyde Sr.
Truly I say to the Big Media in their coverage of Assange this is their Bonhoeffer moment in terms of professional morality: They can reflect the facts or self censor and sanitise in the face of seemingly overwhelming power of the USA military machine. And yes the death rate in Iraq is comparable with Nazi Germany if not as great.
* * *
Which all reminds of the sly Cut & Paste in The Australian yesterday, scolding the Greens (as if the criminal News International have any moral stature on such things) for referencing climate change/global warming as akin to coal trains as death trains in the Holocaust.
Ironically The Australian is 'correct': Inundation and changed monsoonal rainfall patterns from Africa to South East Asia and the Amazon will affect hundreds of millions of people as well as diverse species in nature. Which means the comparison to the Holocaust is inappropriate. The death rate from climate impacts of coal trains will be far, far worse than the Holocaust.
Which of course is anathema to the death cult like worship of the Holocaust as the greatest evil that man has ever been capable of.
Regretably not.
