Free Speech Should be Revered

The ability to speak freely is a treasured right in democratic society. Not the right to slander, nor denigrate but the right to have something to say, and that includes the issues around freedom to publish and print, to draw cartoons and so on. Remember the adage.......a picture is worth a thousand words, or is it that "a cartoon is worth a thousand words".

It has been tested almightily over recent times with the publication of less than positive images of religious figures. And over the years there have been many less than flattering images and drawings of religious leaders of Australians and in Australia.

More recently Bill Leak has had a few cartoons published that mock the Australian Prime Minister. Most Aussies I know think them very satirical, and have a good laugh. Just like they have done with images and cartoons of previous Prime Ministers - Howard, Hawke, Keating, Whitlam, Fraser and others back over the past 50 years or so. And many other cartoonists have also had a go at satirising these same public figures.

Cartoonists do society a great service...........development of the ability to not take one's self TOO seriously, independent of your apparent status in life. Cartoonists have lampooned the "pillars of society" for several hundred years in many English language newspapers and magazines - some of the latter especially famous for satirical political cartoons.

An editorial in the Australian newspaper on 4 April summed it up very eloquently. It is reproduced below and worth reading. Bill Leak's recent cartoons about Kevin Rudd are VERY satirical; just enjoy him taking the mickey out of him........from whatever side of politics!

Laughing with Leak
April 04, 2009
Article from: The Australian

We need people who poke fun at the powerful and po-faced.

Last week, Bill Leak's editorial cartoon in The Weekend Australian offended some readers. To compound the offence, here it is again. This is not done to dismiss critics' concerns. We accept that Leak's work often upsets people. We understand some were affronted in 2003 by his celebrated cartoon of then Labor leader Simon Crean making a very important point to the media, while the press pack found fornicating dogs much more interesting. And we recognise a range of readers were appalled by his 2006 cartoon of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a dominant dog sporting carnally with a West Papuan in canine form.

But Leak should continue to draw it as he sees it. Great cartoonists express the issues of an age.

Thomas Nast helped break Tammany Hall's control of New York politics in the 1870s with his savage caricatures of Boss Tweed. Livingston Hopkins cartoons featuring "the little boy from Manly" in The Bulletin summed up Australian politics in the federation years. And when cartoonists are stopped by the state, it is a sure sign of strife for everybody who believes in open political argument.

As Christopher Allen points out in Review this weekend, while political cartooning prospered in regency England, in revolutionary France the tribunes of the people did not encourage criticism. The caustic commentary supplied by politically engaged artists in Weimar Germany similarly stopped as soon as the Nazis came to power.

But while Leak will not be arrested, no matter how many politicians he upsets, he is certainly subject to the censorious tut-tutting of people who believe that people like them are off limits for lampooning. For years, Leak made fun of the follies and foibles of John Howard, to laughter and applause from the cultural establishment - writers and broadcasters from the ABC and Fairfax newspapers - plus their fellow travellers in the blogosphere. But now that Leak is laughing at Kevin Rudd, today's darling of the Left, all of a sudden his cartoons are in bad taste.

This is the same censorious style adopted by people who applauded the persecution of Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses.

It holds that publishing anything that offends other cultures is impermissible, that laughing at people the opinion-makers approve of is out of order. Fairfax journalist David Marr's selective support for art that offends is an excellent example of this. Marr defends photographer Bill Henson for his controversial images of naked children but attacked a Leak cartoon in The Australian that made fun of Henson, saying "it is astonishing that a national newspaper would print such a thing".

Perhaps people outraged by last week's cartoon took offence because they assume their own political opinions and community standards are synonymous. But whatever critics think, Leak's comment on the Prime Minister's desire to demonstrate his fundamental friendship with US President Barack Obama was fair and amusing comment. He should keep it up.

Australia need larrikins who laugh at the powerful - and the po-faced.

Alexander Pope explained why in the 1730s: "Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit, / And heals with morals what it hurts with wit."