Last week’s brouhaha over an illustration by this newspaper’s chief editorial cartoonist, Johannes Leak, began with an indignant social media outburst. “I cannot believe they keep publishing this guy’s garbage,” tweeted ABC presenter Matt Bevan.
I cannot believe* they keep publishing this guy's garbage. pic.twitter.com/xbozZosZX4
— Matt Bevan 🎙 (@MatthewBevan) August 13, 2020
For a second there I thought Bevan was referring to his boring and pointless taxpayer-funded podcast “Russia, if You’re Listening,” and I was about to applaud him for his belated realisation. Alas, there was no such epiphany, and this was a case of Bevan telling the world he was angry because he had seen something raaaaaaaay-cist.
Except that it was not. Leak’s genius, one that he inherited from his late father, Bill, is to use art to expose and ridicule the idiocy and militancy of tribalism, whether the issue is race, gender, sexuality, or gender politics. As with any political cartoon, success is determined not just by the laughter it generates but also by how those who it lampoons – and their supporters – react. Generally, the louder the screeching, the more certain the artist can be that he or she has clinched it.
And screeching they were. “If this was published in an American newspaper there would be street protests demanding he be fired,” Bevan continued. “And he would be.” If your first instinct as a journalist is to suggest, even in mealy-mouthed terms, that a newspaper cartoonist should be dismissed for causing offence, then perhaps you should reconsider your occupation. Maybe your skills would be better utilised as a complaints officer at the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Leak’s only sin was to highlight the US Democrats’ slavish adherence to identity politics. Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, when introducing his vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, cringeworthily referred to “little black and brown girls” seeing themselves “as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents”.
Leak cleverly depicted a maladroit Biden as purporting to be the champion of anti-racism while using patronising terms such as “little brown girl”, this time referring to Harris. I suspect very few of the exploding heads knew of the context when they first saw the cartoon. Even when they eventually discovered it, most obtusely insisted the cartoon was still racist for two reasons: one, to conceal their embarrassment at having gone off half-cocked; and two, the wider target was The Australian.
And of course in the progressive media mindset, Biden is a male ally, an anti-racist, and a force for good, because he is an opponent of US President Donald Trump, who is sexist, racist, and evil. This is a sham portrayal.
For example, Biden’s attitudes towards women are highly suspect. In 2014, former Nevada assemblywoman Lucy Flores detailed how the former vice-president had approached her from behind and kissed the back of her head, an encounter that made her feel “uneasy, gross and confused”.
Other women have made similar complaints, leading Biden to declare last year he would in future be “more mindful about respecting personal space in the future.” But the media treat these allegations as mere peccadillos.
This was evident when Bevan, in questioning the cartoon’s worthiness, claimed Biden “clearly isn’t a racist”. Really? This was the same Biden who only in May told an African-American interviewer “If you’ve got a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”. As USA Today columnist Paris Dennard wrote in response: “No 77-year-old white man from Delaware has the right, authority or rationale to question my blackness or the blackness of millions of Americans exercising our God-given right to be free and exercise our constitutionally granted power to vote for whomever we want, even if they are Republican”.
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass said Biden’s comment was racist. “Minorities must think and vote the way they’re told by the Democratic Party,” he said. “And if they don’t, they’re demeaned, ridiculed as traitors to their race or ethnicity or their gender. There is nothing new about this.” It is by no means solely an American phenomenon, as Indigenous commentators Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price know all too well.
Then there was the time in 2007 when Biden said of then aspiring presidential candidate Barack Obama, “I mean you’ve got the first, sort of, mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean that’s a storybook, man,” prompting American journalist Mary Katharine Ham to write “A clean black man? The first black guy on the American political scene who can both shower regularly and speak properly? Is that really what Biden thinks? If a Republican had said this, we’d have a national outpouring of grief over the residual ignorance and racial insensitivity in our country …” Yes, I see what you mean, Matt Bevan; clearly Biden is not a racist and it puzzles me why people would form that impression.
Like Bevan, ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry professed outrage at Leak’s cartoon. “Does The Australian’s Johannes Leak set out to offend?” he tweeted. “This is truly awful. He should be ashamed of himself.”
Does @australian's Johannes Leak set out to offend? This is truly awful. He should be ashamed of himself. https://t.co/uzrt2Xb46J
— Paul Barry (@TheRealPBarry) August 13, 2020
Contrast this with Barry’s reaction in 2014 when the Sydney Morning Herald ran a cartoon by Glen Le Lievre featuring a smiling, bulbous-nosed, kippah-clad Jewish man reclining in his chair while he watched the bombing of Gaza. While acknowledging that cartoon “went too far,” Barry’s wider concern was that the backlash against Le Lievre was such that cartoonists who would normally criticise Israel “are more wary of doing so”.
“Luckily for us, cartoonists are a brave lot,” Barry said. “It would be terrible in this country if debate were to be shut down because cartoonists or columnists were bullied into silence … We should help them stand up to it, rather than cheer when they fall to the mob.” Presumably then it was another Paul Barry who last week was leading the mob condemning Leak.
Among the “awful lot of angry people” that Barry cited on Media Watch this week in response to Leak’s cartoon was former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has lodged a complaint with the Press Council against The Australian, claiming it was “a clear-cut example of a newspaper fuelling racist and sexist prejudice”.
Remind me, who was the Australian prime minister at Copenhagen in 2009 who embarrassed himself and his country with his crass language when he told a group of journalists “Those Chinese f..kers are trying to rat-f..k us”? And talking of sexism, who was the prime minister who that same year reduced a 23-year-old female flight attendant to tears, having berated her because his preferred meal was not available?
Rudd, as anyone remotely familiar with Twitter would know, has long had a vendetta against The Australian and News Corp, which he blames for losing office in 2013, and has even called for a royal commission into the company. You might think that was worth mentioning to let Media Watch viewers decide whether Rudd’s complaint to the Press Council is opportunistic, but not Barry.
There is another motivation worth mentioning, and it applies to the predominantly white journalists who constantly call out racism, whether real or imagined. I am sure they, like most of us, wish that people of all races can live together free of racial bigotry, but I am not convinced that is their primary motivation. Rather, it is the desire to be seen by one’s peers and the public to call out racism, to be seen as angry at injustice, to be seen as being on “the right side of history”.
And that is all very well. But do not make the mistake of being the self-appointed defender of the wretched, and do not automatically purport to be offended on their behalf every time their depiction is questioned. It may be a shock to your ego, but some of them do not welcome your intervention, for it implies they are incapable of speaking for themselves. And practically no-one outside Twitter gives a rat’s about how sad or angry this cartoon made you feel. Remember the saying about good journalism never being about journalists?
As I have already said, journalism is not the place for self-appointed cartoon commissars. Then again, they would be a perfect fit at a state-owned broadcaster in an authoritarian country. Hey Russia, are you listening?
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