Fluo posted:

Daily Express:


His popular went up 3 points. It looks like this.

quote:

Cameron extends lead over EdM to 10% in YouGov’s best PM rating. He’s 33, EdM 23(-2), Clegg 7 (+2)

Junior G-man posted:

Ahahaha, am I seeing it right? Is that a rack full of suits like the fatcats always wear? The blue pinstripe?

Zephro posted:

I think those are the ratigns for the parties as a whole. The personal popularity of the leaders is:

At least, according to YouGov.

All the Express cartoons are fantastically lovely though. They aren't even funny and don't seem to make any attempt to be so.

goatface posted:

Broken abacuses.

Fluo posted:

I love the ACME Sloth Gym!

Fluo posted:

quote:

“One good thing. You don’t have to drive to the station any more.”

GTO posted:

What does everyone make of the Gerald Scarfe cartoon that has caused a stir today?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21239917

This article has the cartoon, although it missing the caption:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4338264,00.html

quote:

Bell's cartoons often feature grotesque characters, and have sometimes caused controversy. During the November 2012 Israel/Gaza conflict The Guardian published Bell's cartoon showing the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as a puppet master controlling William Hague and Tony Blair. It was asserted by Dave Rich blogging for the Community Security Trust that the illustration was comparable to those featured in Nazi and other anti-semitic publications. While Bell defended his cartoon, 29 complaints had been received by the UK's Press Complaints Commission a week after the cartoon's publication. The newspaper's readers' editor Chris Elliott concluded in an article on 25 November: "While journalists and cartoonists should be free to express an opinion that Netanyahu is opportunistic and manipulative, in my view they should not use the language – including the visual language – of antisemitic stereotypes."

quote:

The readers' editor on… accusations of antisemitism against a political cartoon
The image of Jews as puppet masters is an antisemitic theme. But does that mean Israeli politicians should never be portrayed using such imagery, when other countries' politicians often are?[...]

The Supreme Court (the goon user) posted:

The whole charade was completely ridiculous. A lot of the comments were complaining that Steve Bell had drawn an anti-semitic cartoon because, aside from the puppets, there was deliberate over-use of the Star of David and under-use of the Menorah, i.e. criticising Bibi for being Jewish rather than Israeli.

Whoops:

Fluo posted:

I love the ACME Sloth Gym!

Fluo posted:

Daily Express:

Fluo posted:

Guardian:

The government says the first major railway line to be built north of London since Victorian times will create 100,000 jobs.

Fluo posted:

Telegraph:

BastardySkull posted:

The BBC covered both this and the scandal of the MP (regrettably) referring to 'the Jews' as he criticised Israel. Neither explored anything to do with actual apartheid and persecution against the Palestinians. The latter only deigned to point out that the MP stood by his criticism of Israeli crimes late in the day.

Both of these things just blindly report that something 'unfortunate' has happened, a bunch of people apologising and getting outraged, but don't at all explore why Gerald Scarfe or that MP wanted to criticise Israel.

HCO Plumer GCB GCM posted:

Not to mention the floor littered with broken abacuses and the hall-of-mirrors mirror emblazened with BEHOLD THE STATESMAN.

Epic.

Fluo posted:

Telegraph:

Fluo posted:

Guardian:

Holy gently caress..... where the hell is this going to go?

Presto posted:

As an American I'm not sure I understand the message here, but that last panel is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a political cartoon. "POOP! POOP!" "PARP! PARP"

Zephro posted:

Could you stop posting these? I can't stop myself looking, and every time I do I'm staring into some kind of mediocrity singularity. I could literally draw better cartoons than these.

quote:

Gerald Scarfe's cartoon clearly echoes images that were used to vilify jews says Daniel Taub, Israeli Ambassador to the UK on #newsnight

quote:

@BBCNewsnight I have to say I trust Gerald Scarfe more than his critics normally @BBCLookNorth

quote:

So #Newsnight - not a single Palestinian spokesperson. But ok, cause according to Hugo Rifkind 'only 172 Palestinians killed in last year'

quote:

Scarfe's Netanyahu cartoon was offensive? That's the point
The fact that Murdoch felt the need to apologise for Gerald Scarfe's cartoon demonstrates the form's enduring power

I greeted news of Rupert Murdoch's apology for an allegedly antisemitic cartoon by Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times with a sigh of deep weariness. But before we get up to our oxters in the guts of my foul craft, let's pick some of the bones out of this latest scandal. Note, first, that Murdoch's apology was to Binyamin Netanyahu personally, as one member of the global elite showing solidarity to another. Remember, also, that Bibi is a favourite posterboy for Murdoch's brand of neo-conservative cheerleading.

As to Scarfe's cartoon specifically, it seems to me almost identical to every other blood-spattered pictorial lament for man's inhumanity to man he's knocked out over the past 40 years. Except in this case, because of the subject matter and the timing – on Holocaust memorial day – the trademark Scarfean gore could, if you chose, have wider ramifications. And so it has proved.

If, like me and other cartoonists, you've produced cartoons critical of the actions of the state of Israel and then received thousands of emails, most of which read "gently caress off you antisemitic oval office", you tend to get a bit jaded. But over the years I've received similar responses – and worse, including death threats – from Muslims, Catholics, US Republicans, US Democrats, Serbs, atheists and the obese, as well as from supporters of Israel. After a while, the uniformity of the response can tempt you into thinking that this is all contrived and orchestrated, and certainly a lot of it is.

But then again, you may know that the standard complaint – "This is the most disgracefully antisemitic cartoon to be published since the closure of Der Stürmer" – can only be made because Julius Streicher's foul Nazi rag regularly published the vilest antisemitic cartoons imaginable, which prepared the ground for and then cheered on the greatest crime in human history. In the long shadow of the Holocaust, perhaps it's just about understandable – if not forgivable – that each time I drew Ariel Sharon, a fat man with a big nose, as being fat and having a big nose, it was therefore considered reasonable for me to be equated with mass murderers.

The responses, though, probably have more to do with the nature of the medium than its content. Visual satire is a dark, primitive magic. On top of the universal propensity to laugh at those in power over us, cartoons add something else: the capacity to capture someone's likeness, recreate them through caricature, and thereby take control of them. This is voodoo – though the sharp instrument with which you damage your victim at a distance is a pen. None of this is benign. It's meant to ridicule and demean, and almost all political cartooning is assassination without the blood.

But add to that the way we consume this stuff and you get the perfect recipe for offence. In newspapers, cartoons squat like gargoyles on top of the columns, and while you nibble your way through the columnists' prose for several minutes, you swallow the cartoon whole in seconds. The internet has also changed things. British cartoonists find their work being consumed, via the web, by people in nations who haven't had more than 300 years of rude portrayals of the elite.

When Steve Bell and I first had our cartoons for the Guardian published online, many Americans would recoil in horror at our depictions of their president. Steve and I got many emails pointing out that Bush was their head of state, deserved some respect, and then asked if we'd ever depict our royal family in the same disgraceful way.

At that point, of course, you pull back the curtain on Gillray's depictions of George III making GBS threads on the French fleet. Indeed, in the mid-1780s, the French ambassador warned Versailles that Britain was teetering on the verge of another revolution, 150 years after they'd last cut off their king's head. His evidence? The kiosks stretching down the Strand, all selling satirical prints depicting the royals in the most disrespectful and disgusting ways imaginable.

That he was wholly wrong should, perhaps, give the armies of the offended pause, even if other cartoons – like the filth in Der Stürmer – have misused the voodoo.

You need, in the end, to apply the simple acid test for satire – as well as journalism: does it comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable? True, the Nazis used cartoons, but so has everyone else, from Stalin's Soviet Union to Iran today.

Iran countered the Danish Mohammed cartoons with their own joking about the Holocaust. But that's not satire, because state-sponsored satire is the ultimate oxymoron.

And speaking of Nazis, Hitler was a huge fan of the Evening Standard's David Low. The Express cartoonist Carl Giles, then a war cartoonist, was given a Luger as a souvenir by the Commandant of Belsen after its liberation because the man was a huge fan of his cartoons. Of course, after Hitler got into power and Low started, beautifully, to take the piss, Low, along with his cartooning colleagues Illingworth, Vicky and even Heath Robinson, was placed on the Gestapo's deathlist. (In fact, Vicky got it from all directions: a cartoon for Beaverbrook's Evening Standard in the 1950s calling for the abolition of the death penalty so enraged a doctor in Harrow that he wrote to the paper lamenting the fact that Vicky and his family managed to escape from Nazi Germany 25 years earlier.)

Which gets us back to Scarfe. As the Israeli paper Haaretz has already observed (arguing the cartoon isn't antisemitic at all), if Scarfe had spent the last 50 years solely offending Israel, his critics might have a point. The fact is, he, like the rest of us, is there to offend everyone.

quote:

Incidentally, if you've found various things I've written about #Scarfegate, please bear in mind I'm not a fan -& doubt he'd support me much

quote:

How long will British troops be in Mali? The cartoon that is either anti-semitic or anti-Netanyahu. Plus new childcare benefits, plastic pollution and award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel.

In-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines with Kirsty Wark.

quote:

Ex soldiers working for Councils in the UK are handing out £80 0n the spot fines to people who drop litter.

quote:

“Think hard, George. When you put the cat out did you drop a toffee wrapper?”

mfcrocker posted:

The most shameful part is where you've clicked on the link.

Israel Ambassador to Britain posted:

Why I say the antisemitism question isn't really the relevant question is because the real question is this acceptable and fair comment?"

Fluo posted:

Telegraph:

Peel posted:

Bell is magical.


This is not a good cartoon, it's lazy and weak, but Clegg made me laugh.


And even the Torygraph has been taking a line against the Coalition these last couple of days, and not from an obvious 'they aren't right-wing enough' perspective. Is this normal?

big scary monsters posted:

I don't understand the Mail at all. Surely littering is the remit of hoodies and yobs, this is raising money for underfunded councils without raising taxes, and providing employment to WAR HEROES rather than darkies and immigrants. How can they possibly oppose it?

Peel posted:

And even the Torygraph has been taking a line against the Coalition these last couple of days, and not from an obvious 'they aren't right-wing enough' perspective. Is this normal?

Supeerme posted:

Are you willing to on that?

Fluo posted:

About antisemitism

big scary monsters posted:

I don't understand the Mail at all. Surely littering is the remit of hoodies and yobs, this is raising money for underfunded councils without raising taxes, and providing employment to WAR HEROES rather than darkies and immigrants. How can they possibly oppose it?

GTO posted:

I think it all boils down to making the distinction between 'the Jews' and 'the Israeli state' or 'Israeli politicians'. The former is a generalisation that seems antisemitic regardless of the author's intention, and the latter are fair game for political comment.

Fluo posted:

Spit on. However it does get a bit confusing since the Israeli flag has the star of David on it however that tends to be a case by case basic. Like the characters in all the cartoons they were talking about weren't 'stereotype anti-semitic view of jews', they were drawings of a single person which didn't have the big nazi style jewish nose or the bag of gold around their neck etc.