Dave Brown – the worst cartoonist in Britain

Dave Brown does big ugly drawings for the Independent. He is their lead cartoonist, and his work is awful. Worse than that, it is disgusting. Currently, he is obsessed by shit.

Last Thursday it was Obama, sinking up to his teeth in a river of shit, waving a toilet roll, and saying “ASK NOT HOW DEEPYOUR COUNTRY’S DOO-DOO IS FOR YOU, BUT … …. GLUG!” At first glance it looks like an attack on Obama (not a good idea at the moment), but you slowly realize it’s meant to be sympathetic towards his economic dilemmas.

He is shown misquoting JFK (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”.), but this is a pretty irrelevant attempt to put a gloss on the basic observation that Obama is “in the shit”. Since that isn’t any truer this week than it was on Inauguration Day, it hardly counts as a revelation. What is truly disturbing is the way every floating turd is drawn with loving care. And there are dozens of them.

On Friday 27th Brown was back again with the brown stuff – but this time it was virtual. The immense back end of a huge cat towers over Alastair Darling, who is saying “…AND TODAY I CAN ANNOUNCE THE CONSTRUCTION OF A £325 bn LITTER TRAY!” The cat’s arsehole is just above his head, with the word “RUMBLE!” next to it. The cat, labelled RBS, is about to pour shit all over the Chancellor.

Can somebody explain to Dave Brown that this is just not funny? There is nothing in it that makes you laugh. No perception, no new understanding of the crisis. We all know what RBS has achieved. If we must follow the ghastly metaphor, RBS, and that nice Sir Fred Goodwin, has already shat on the country, and everybody understands that. The “idea” of the cartoon is that this is a “fat cat”. That is a dead cliché, and D. Brown lacks the wit to bring it back to life.

Go back a few days, and we find Brown attacking Brown. It’s Monday 23 February, and the Oscars were awarded the night before. So here is Gordon accepting an award for “WORST PERFORMANCE IN AN ECONOMIC ROLE” (D. Brown can only write in caps). G. Brown is made to say – á la Kate Winslet – “LEHMAN BROTHERS…BERNARD…SIR JAMES…SIR ALLEN…OH..OH GOD! WHO’S THE OTHER ONE….” and then the dud punchline: “…OH, IT’S ME!”

Again, can someone explain to this deluded idiot that there is a difference between crooks like Bernard Madoff and “Sir” Allen Stanford, and G. Brown? And a difference between G. Brown’s attempts to save the situation, and the way the Bush administration let Lehman Brothers go under?

Cartoons work in an instant of understanding. Anybody following the crisis will instantly register the difference between crooks and incompetence, even if they can’t explain it all immediately. In that moment, the cartoon dies.

D. Brown draws G. Brown as a huge fat sweating woman in a purple dress, with a vast stomach and thighs. There is a reason for drawing G. Brown as fat.

A little while back D. Brown met G. Brown at some event. G. Brown said that he wasn’t really that fat. (He isn’t, either: it’s true, and D. Brown must know it, since he has seen the PM close up.) D. Brown came back with a self-serving little article in the Indy, in which he said that owing to this slight, he would now always draw the PM as fat.

What a sense of humour! What perception! What intelligence! What ego!
(There was a photo of the great artist at his board. He has that flat-faced inexpressive Kevin Pietersen look.)

His first effort after that was about G. Brown’s appearance before a Commons Select Committee. GB is shown leaving the room with his trousers burned away, and his buttocks huge and bare, with a hot-cross bun effect drawn on them. And why? Because he has been sitting in “the hot seat”! Top left, the ever-literate DB has a line about “buns”. This is American for the buttocks. It’s not a word that has ever taken in this country, any more than “butt” has.

Another little problem with DB is that his drawing is so heavy. It’s like a lead weight on the joke (if there is a joke). Truly great cartoonists, like Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman, had a light touch and a line that’s worth looking at. Steve Bell is heavy, but quirky – and of course he’s funny, unlike poor struggling DB, who draws like those amateur artists who have to get in every boring detail.

Worst of all for the supposedly liberal Indy, DB is taking the Tory line on the economic crisis – that it’s somehow all the PM’s fault. Dave, if you can listen and not call us all fat – it’s not true, and people out here know it isn’t.

And do try to get rid of the awful clichés – “hot seat”, “fat cat” and “in the shit” aren’t going to make anybody laugh. Cartoons are supposed to give the person looking at them a new perception in an instant. You haven’t done this for a long time.

Salut!

Laura Barton meets Deneuve

Awful interview with the great actress Catherine Deneuve by the workhorse Laura Barton in the Guardian (16 January). A biography of Deneuve has alleged that her father, the actor Maurice Dorléac, was a collaborator with the Germans between 1940 and 1944. Barton quotes Deneuve as saying: “I’m going to sue the editor of the book”. Now, why would you want to do that? Editors knock manuscripts into shape. What Deneuve meant was that she was going to sue the publisher of the book – but the French for publisher is éditeur. Barton failed to spot this mistake in Deneuve’s usually good English.

What did Barton think Deneuve meant as she typed up her interview? Didn’t any alarm bells ring? How can you be so dim, Laura?

Equally ignorant was the Showbiz page of the Daily Express, who picked up the Barton effort from the first edition, and ran a story headed “Deneuve to Sue Book Editor”. It was the same ignorance of French. (The quotes were the same – unacknowledged).

Laura Barton is a hopeless interviewer anyway. Deneuve’s new film A Christmas Tale has the death of a child. So Barton– brilliant move! – asks Deneuve (who plays the mother) if it might have something to do with the death of her own sister, Françoise Dorléac, in a car crash in 1967, when she was aged 25. Deneuve is reduced to patiently explaining that the death of a fictional child is not the same as the death of a real person of 25. “She says it quickly, but not crossly”, Barton writes. So she knew very well it was a silly question – in which case, why ask it?

Later in the interview Deneuve mentions her decision not to play in a sequel to her most famous film, Belle de Jour. Barton quotes the actress:
“But I haven’t seen the film yet. Did you see it?” She says it warmly, as if asking after an old friend. “How is it?”
There is no answer, and we can guess why. Barton’s research didn’t run to watching the sequel to a famous film.

Barton is a lazy interviewer who doesn’t do her research. She falls back on dud questions. She doesn’t seem to know much about the allegations against Maurice Dorléac – but what would have been the value of her discussion of the pressures on people to collaborate?

Laura – you have access. Use it properly, and try to think a bit before you get in there with a great actress.

Stephen Glover: Dimbo

We’ve noticed before that Stephen Glover is not the brightest light in the columnists’ galaxy: his printed matter is mostly dark matter. He never gives up being dim, and it does encourage the laughter of all of us down at the Café Coup de Poing.

Latest is his defence of Paul Dacre in the Indy last Monday (17 November) – and see M. Apache below, who has to admit that he holds what Stephen calls the “liberal default” position on the Max Mosley success story. (Implication: I think, but my opponents have their opinions wired in.)

His argument is that “liberals” like to support Mr Justice Eady on privacy, but they don’t know that Eady is illiberal on other matters. He comes up with two cases in which Eady has come out for “wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen” to the detriment of investigative stories by Rachel Ehrenfeld (2005), and the Wall Street Journal (2003, judgement overturned).

Two simple points here, Steve.

1. If Eady was wrong on those two cases (and he probably was), it doesn’t follow, in logic or emotion, that he was wrong about Max Mosley. He can be right about one, and wrong about the other two, without affecting our view of the Mosley judgement. Nor does this information make Dacre right about the supposedly “arrogant and amoral judgements” that he believes Eady is making. Default liberals need not be bothered by Glover’s new info about Eady’s past activities.

2. Glover’s conclusion is pure Dacre: Eady is “developing a privacy law off his own bat” and “develop[ing] a privacy law single-handedly”. In keeping with his dimbo status, Glover hasn’t noticed that his argument about Eady’s two “bad” judgements undermines the argument that Eady has an agenda that he is pursuing single-mindedly. Dacre, who is probably a bit brighter than Dimbo Stevo, has noticed the difficulty, and is careful to say that Eady has “again and again” found against newspapers under the Human Rights Act. This means he doesn’t have to think about differently-based cases in which Eady has come out against a newspaper and a publisher. Dacre’s case that Eady is an obsessed monomaniac is undermined by Glover’s brilliant research into these cases!

Come on, Stephen – sharpen up!

Where now for poetry and political culture?

Mmmm! The old public poetry chestnut raises its head again via a meeting held at the Poetry Society, led by John Walsh and Blake Morrison. Walsh post-publicised his activities with a piece in the Independent on Tuesday, 28 October, entitled Why shouldn’t newspapers print odes to Obama or about the banking crisis? M. Apache couldn’t be there, unfortunately, but he would have had something to say about these two stars’ assertion that there is no worthwhile public poetry at the moment. As for not putting it in newspapers, what about Tom Paulin and Andrew Motion? – they’ve had plenty of stuff on the newsprint in recent years.

The crux of the matter seems to be that Walsh and Morrison don’t see much political poetry around, and what there is isn’t epic enough to take on the big issues – war, the economy, etc – and certainly won’t be given space in newspaper columns.

The truth is that they don’t know what’s going on.

Walsh refers to the sixties as a golden age of political protest, and by definition political poetry, and he wonders where the big hitters are now. Let’s pause for a second and consider how long it’s been since poetry took centre stage in the arena of political debate and protest. Tony Harrison’s magnificent V was published in the Independent in 1985, and dealt with “the state of the nation” through the author’s view of the miners’ strike. He followed this up in the early 90s with two much shorter polemics dealing with the first Gulf War. Adrian Mitchell also had two poems on this issue published in newsprint, the most notable of which, “Blood and Oil”, was more agit-prop than epic – but it was an effective protest.

Then, I guess, there was Heathcote Williams, with his powerful, majestic crusades in favour of the natural world – Whale Nation, Sacred Elephant and Autogeddon – which were big-selling books whose profits were largely donated to Greenpeace, at great personal sacrifice to the author, it needs to be said. Surely that was an effective intervention on a grand scale?

In more recent times political protest has shifted away from poetry and into the arenas of film and stand-up comedy. But there’s still a lot of poetry being written and published which responds, analyses, and protests – and is related to the big issues of the day. Let’s get real and name some names. Michael Horovitz may be another renegade from the sixties but his recent book – A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium– is a huge rant against the misdemeanours of Blair and Bush, and the reader is left in no doubt about where Horovitz stands. For all its faults, this is an impassioned intervention in public debate. Andy Croft, a traditionalist in formal terms and closely allied to Tony Harrison in stance, has written reams of political poetry, ranging from anguished reflections on the ‘failure’ of socialism in practice, to more hilarious and jaunty pieces – “Comrade Laughter Tries Stand-up” - for example. His “rewriting” of Shelley’s “The Mask of Anarchy” is a classic of contemporary political literature and should be widely anthologised. Perhaps the reason the Independent wouldn’t publish such a poem is that it was too critical of the west’s military intervention in other countries post-Second World War, and – unlike Harrison –didn’t aim at some sense of unity or healing. This is controlled anger at its most fruitful.

Gordon Wardman is a fine, largely unrecognised, poet of the left who has a canny knack for dialogue and is hilariously funny as well as being sharply satirical and direct. His trilogy of chapbooks dealing with the life and times of two post-Thatcher “English Cowboys” (Tam and Hank) should be republished in one volume and distributed widely. That this isn’t happening may have something to do with the failure of “the left” to get a grip on current poetical culture; but we live in interesting times and there is surely some turbulence ahead.

Then there are those poets who inhabit academia and who attempt to document the changes in education after the adoption of a business ethos during the closing years of the last Tory administration. People like Tony Lopez, whose montage techniques (see False Memory, published by Salt) give us the feel and texture of political and social change, while expressing unease and critical distance. Lopez’s work proves that it’s possible to mix social concern with an aesthetic sense, something which poetry, at its best, often manages to do. Finally (the list is too long to be inclusive here), there’s Robert Sheppard, another academic who has written on poetry and politics for magazines such as the New Statesman, and whose poetry – in Tin Pan Arcadia, for example – is both savage and hilarious, dark and political, in all the best ways.

What Walsh and Morrison seem to be missing is that there is a wealth of what we might call Political or Public Poetry out there, being written and published and commented on. It’s just that they don’t know about it. It’s various, from the political ranting (and we should be pleased that Horovitz is still out there, doing his thing), to the more subtle investigations of power and its (often) unaccountable nature. Walsh and Morrison are both Establishment figures – Walsh once edited the Sunday Times books section, and so helped to keep John Carey active, itself a crime against humanity. Very recently, he devoted part of his column to speculation about Edith Sitwell’s underwear.

Morrison is ex-TLS, and was literary editor of The Observer at a time when further crimes were committed – oh, and literary editor of the Independent on Sunday too. Didn’t notice too many leftist poems being published by him when he had that opportunity.

That the serious newspapers and journals don’t very often pick up on actually-existing political poetry is perhaps as much to do with the question of politics (note the little ‘p’) as the poetry. Think about it, John.

Red-tops and red bottoms

Max Mosley has a spanked bottom, but Paul Dacre is a monster of moralism. Who wins? Mosley, of course. Dacre’s self-commending speech to the Society of Editors on 9 November 2008 may actually have done him harm. His departure from the Daily Mail may not be imminent, but when it comes it may be related to competence rather than to those supposed “illnesses” he’s recently been suffering from.

His critics were able to show quite easily that he doesn’t understand how the law works in this country, and that personal attacks – his speciality – don’t work when it’s obvious that Parliament, and not simply Justice Eady, were behind the privacy legislation he attacked with such “corkscrew logic” (Polly Toynbee).

Max Mosley has now gone on the record twice about the case he won against the News of the World. He has a shrewd understanding of the possibilities offered by legal action, as his success in court showed. And his main point has been that if a newspaper thinks public interest is really involved, they can appeal against a lower court’s decision. Dacre wants to be able to investigate people’s private lives – he calls it “good journalism”, but everybody else calls it triviality and invasion of privacy. Eady is the “arrogant and amoral” judge who has facilitated this
.
Well, it’s not true. Listen to Mosley in the Guardian, 20 October:

To live in a society where the rules are made by the [tabloid] editors, I think, would horrify most people. Particularly as it’s very one-sided. They never hesitate, for example, to use completely illegal means to get information, such as bribing people with access to the police computer. So they can’t talk about morality, they are immoral themselves.

Exactly: and it was this that Dacre was defending, with more than a hint that his friend Gordon Brown had been spoken to, and had showed much sympathy for the press’s need to get hold of people’s “gas bills or medical records”. (Yes, Dacre said that.)

If Mosley’s remarks are enough to deal with the red-tops – and how useful his red bottom has been! – what about the more serious papers?

There’s a problem here, because Dacre wasn’t the first to complain about Eady’s judgement. First out were the liberal press, and it was upright figures like Peter Wilby (ex-New Statesman and Observer) and Donald Trelford (ex-Observer) who were complaining about the likely effect of Eady’s judgement on the ability of the serious press to conduct investigative journalism.
There is a difficult question to be asked here. What investigative journalism? The Sunday Times's Insight column is dead – has been dead for thirty years. David Leitch is dead. Phillip Knightley, once a fine reporter, is today reduced to making resentful-old-age (he’s 78) remarks about the probity of the great photographer Robert Capa. Today’s Sunday Times is committed to articles that make its readers anxious – part of its right-wing strategy – not to ones that make them exult over the revelation of financial wrong-doing or political chicanery.

When did David Leigh last have a scoop that mattered? Even nice David Hencke used to have good stories. What happened to the Guardian? Richard Norton-Taylor has good contacts, but there’s been nothing big recently. It’s a good “basic news” newspaper, not an investigating paper. The BBC does better in getting strong stories (don’t fail to give Andrew Gilligan credit for the David Kelly story, just because Gilligan has turned out to be a frightful person). The Times isn’t even trying, for obvious reasons. The Indy is mostly concerned with large-issue revelations, like Monsanto or some aspect of global warming. A lot of recent “exclusives” are of the “who cares” variety.

The bitter truth is that the heavy papers can’t afford investigative journalism any more. So there’s something disingenuous about their claims that investigative journalism is going to be impeded by Eady’s judgment .

The playwright David Hare remarked on Radio 4’s “Broadcasting House” back in January, when brought in to discuss the Sunday papers, that there was nothing in them. Presenter Paddy O’Connell was panicked– there has to be something in the papers, or we’re lost! Well, perhaps we are lost, because Hare was right. Skim through, and what do you find that really matters? Saturday’s papers will have picked up anything of interest from the previous week, as Peter Wilby has admitted. What you get in the Sundays is a bit more depth, and a whole lot of comment. But no real investigations.

So let’s hear less criticism of Mosley’s success from the liberal left until the liberal papers can get their act together.

What the red-tops do is made more difficult by Eady’s judgement, and that’s all to the good. Now let’s see if the liberal Sundays and dailies can come up with the necessary funds. With the Independent heading for financial difficulties, that’s not going to be easy.
Meanwhile, Max Mosley can have some satisfaction. His battered bottom has prevented a lot of unhappiness for a lot of people.

Ross and Brand: Why they did it

A phone interview was planned, but “due to unforeseen circumstances” (BBC website news), Andrew Sachs couldn’t be there. So they phoned him anyway, and talked to the answerphone.

Sachs was insulted because he wasn’t there to answer the phone call. He spoiled the programme. It was his business to be there.

It was pure media arrogance.

Notice how excited Brand was about the technology. “I’m so sorry about the last message”, he says. “Put the phone down”.

He speaks to the technology: “All right, Andrew Sachs’s answerphone?” Then: “I’m ever so sorry for what I said about Andrew Sachs”.

Sachs himself has been replaced by the technology.

Ross talks about the photographs of grandchildren he imagines would be next to the phone, as Sachs supposedly listens. Because it was Sachs’s business to be there, to hear Jonathan Ross speak.

Ross speaks, you listen.

Notice how excited Ross is about Brand having sex. It’s the first thing he says. And the second: “She was bent over the couch…”. (Been watching Straw Dogs, have we?)

And then the idea of death.

Brand says to the technologised Sachs: “I’ll kill you”. And then talks about his victim hanging himself because of his revelation about Georgina Baillie.

Brand speaks, others die.

Mlle Apache, bienvenue!

We welcome Jane O’Grady as Mademoiselle Apache, evidently an enthusiast for headbutting violence. Writing in The Observer in May 2008, she describes some of the things she likes to do:

Feeling yourself observed, concentrating on your headache, using your head as a weapon with which to butt someone, transforms it into a thing or a tool separate from you, the agent and observer.

This detachment has indeed been M. Apache’s experience in these circumstances, head down on the Boulevard Raspail. We hope Mlle Apache will become a true headbutter, in every sense of the word. Our only fear is that she may turn out to be too intelligent for the pages of The Observer.