Monday 19 January 2015

THE SUNDAY ISHMAEL. POST-HURRICANE EDITION.

 WHAT'S ALL THIS CHARLIE SHIT?

I have just checked and in the current edition of Private Eye, including strips and counting them as one, there  are about fifty cartoons, 


twenty-six  issues per year produce, therefore,  about - what - thirteen hundred. I have been reading the Eye for most of my life and must have seen tens of thousands of the bloody things;

 

 the  odd one makes me smile and occasionally I laught out loud at some barely discernible  sketching of domestic absurdity but  I cannot remember even one of them, unsurprising, for there has been nothing in them which did not merely poke fun at something I already knew stank to high Heaven, that, after all is usually what cartoons do, they assume, for their existence, that the viewer will have some prior knoweledge of the subject, 
the doodler and the viewer must be party to the same in-joke.

Cartoonists are, to put it mildly, vastly over-valued. 

And whaddayoudo for a living? 
It's a very important job, actually,  I draw pictures which capture and  condemn the eternal untruths, superficially light-hearted, yet pungent, profound, scriptural, even, some of them. 
Change the world?  I should say so.  Just look at how, everywhere, thanks to cartoonists, Villainy and Vice are  in retreat, while Virtue advances on all fronts. Cartoonery more important than plumbing, is it? Ab-so-lutely. All our freedoms depend on heroic doodlers like me doodling. Course they do, sweetie, course they do. And it beats working for a living, right?

Photographs, though, are a different story.  Who can forget the impact of this

or this?
No deft caricaturising,
 
no speech marks

just the photograph, 
stealing a moment, forever; 


 the camera's larceny and the photographer's boldness, 


not too many of these produced in Ian Hislop's office.

And there's a doodlers' pecking order. People  wax hysterical about Ralph Steadman's blood-drenched  gargoyle caricature  output but actually I didn't need Ralphie to inform me that Nixon was a deranged criminal. 
 
 And nor should have anyone else. 

Should there be doodle-therapy on the NHS, to help us understand shit, can't we tell by the smell? 

Ralph's Gonzo Fear and Loathing collaborations matter nothing,


 save to a dwindling,  dying band of perma-adolescent  Hunter S Thompson fans;
 his Oddbins illustrations matter even less. 


 Maybe mr verge will have a more positive view of Steadman; 
surely he cannot be as trivial as I contend, Steadman, that is.

 Gerry  Scarfe's dark ouevre  proves  a little goes a long way and since he so artistically  augmented the preposterous, juvenile  mewlings and pukings of Pink Floyd's The Wall,
 
 he now, with rare, dextrous flexibility,  
draws and inks and washes with his head up his arse,

 
 A portrait of the artist as a rich man.

No business quite like show business. 

We don't need no edu-cay-shun.  
Right, profound as fuck, that.


I don't know quite how to caricature les caricaturistes Francaise;  worthless,  decadent,  layabout  dilletantes; publishers' ink-stained rentboys, drawing dirty pictures, but not too dirty, whatever they do it's not a proper job, doesn't produce anything, doesn't serve anyone.  What's the point, today, of a dead-tree press cartoonist, if it's not to become not a recreational but an occupational martyr?

I don't give a fuck about a handful of French scribblers, Christ, I'd be hard-pressed to care if the entire British press corps was put up against the wall and shot;  these guys, actually, were asking for this to happen to them, they knew, everybody knew that you can't argue with those who don't care if they live or die;  now that it's happened, why must we beat our breasts?

And there is a wider, more realistic view of la Belle France, in which she is not, never has been Freedom's last redoubt.

France's aggressive secularism, its historical repression of religion, its own glorious headchopping past and  its recent denial of religious expression through clothing and diet are hardly emblematic of a   nation wedded to treedom of speech, thught and expression, of a nation  which we are now urged, commanded to admire, a nation in whose hysteria we must all painfully  share, lest our arses fall out, a nation with whom we must all, twittering,  solidaritize.  I saw several of the NewPeople interviewed, 

they said they'd queued all night to get a copy of Charlie Hebdo's Greates Hits, took a bloodbath, mind,  for them to even be aware of political satire but now that they had a hold of it they were all gonna soundbite the fucking thing to death, whatever it was. 

Solidarity, they intoned, with some idiot editor, that's what counted; values, freedom, rights; all that was missing was Gordon the Ruiner, micing onstage and  gobbing-off about his moral compass, his mad father and the right sol-you-shun for hard-working families. Christ, have we ever been so platitudinised, and by such  brain-dead, Twittering imbeciles?  They couldn't even spell sanctimonious, most of them, jerking about in the moveable maelstrom of a crass shitegeist. Death to the NewPeople 'swhat I say, stone them with their i-things, their latte coffees and their moisturising products. Solidarity with racist, Nazi-loving scum bags, that'll do for them, until the next thing comes along.

The recent Frog banning of the burqa and the hidjab are redolent of  surrenderiste Nazi France, in which only a few bravely resisted while  the many collaborated with Hitler's Godlessheathenbastards, sucking Hermann's bratwurst and rooting-out French Hebes for the death camps. 

Now, it's How dare these Muslim bitches dress as they wish?  We, their masters, must be able to see into their eyes, and mebbe 'ave a peep at their duskee tits, too, for aren't we Frenchmen, a-ha-ha-ha and uzzerwise we do not know if zey are planning to bomb our arses off. Ah, oui, d'accord, le freedom de speech and  de thought, c'est magnifique, but not for ze niggers and les Allah-bothereurs,  merde, non.  Whaddayoumean, zey are as French as moi, moi, Jean-Claude de Paree?  'Ow can zey be French, when zey are fucking niggers,. eh, vous etes 'avin ze laff, n'est ce pas? 

In some regions, M'sieu Frog has insisted that - in mainly Muslim schools -  pork must be on the menu, for true secularism demands that religious dietary concerns have no place in public life.  Aye, tolerance, freedom, rights.  Cunts is what they are, these Frogs with their nasty, cowardly bullying.

There have always been racists, the French, they've always hated the Jews.

 The slopes in Indo-China and the wogs in Algeria gave them a good kicking, denying their supposed military superiority and despite de Gaulle skulking away the Hitler war in London - at my parents' expense - the haughty monsterqueen barred his former allies and protectors from entry to the then Common Market, hard to believe, now, really, when you think of the boys gutted on the Normandy beaches, that the French would shun the British so. Must be their concern for rights and freedoms and tolerance which excluded us from their private cosying-up to Hermann, post-war.

And le premier frog, Hollande, he wasn't in office five minutes before he wanted to bomb previous colonies, massacre the natives and then suck Obama's cock all the way from Washington to Damascus; socialiste, he claimed to be, internationaliste, he claimed to be, now, having betrayed both causes he has leapt on this relatively minor contretemps murdereuse as though it was his electoral salvation.

So, mind you, has everyone else, 
from old HamFace, CallHimDave

Lessbeclear about this,
if, back home, you believe in Freedom
I order you to vote for me. 

to Bibi The Crook Netanyahu;
 
Vote for me
or it's fire and fucking brimstone,
a morrain of frogs, burning bushes
all that shit.

Although, in Paris, this was the reality,
 

  back in BibiLand

all the gentile whore leaders
 had been photoshopped out of reality,
maybe by Jehovah, Himself.
Values, you see, solidarity.

Even Andy, the other night,
Did I ever tell you I went to Glasgow University,
before helping Mr Murdoch destroy Britain?

betrayed his true, vile self - was so outraged by a French totty calling him  what he is, a white, eldery, comfortable entitlementista, living in middle class environs that I was sure the hateful old playboy was going to have a stroke, maybe next time, if it please God. 


 Freedom of speech is all very well, Mademoiselle,
but not on my show.


And now, as if all that Je suis Charlie shit was not enough, we must endure this further abomination, first compulsory Froghood, now compulsory Judaism. If I was Jewish I'd kick their fucking teeth in, these two, resurrect Irgun and the Stern Gang, hang these two  from the nearest hotel balcony.

No, Eric, you're not, you're a fat, lying, worthless, thieving, opportunist  old cunt, for which God, if He is, will punish you by making your arse fall out.

No, you're not, Tracey, you're just a decrepit old Tory slapper, one blessed with the Everything-I-Touch  - border controls, passports, immigration, extraditions,  police reform - Turns-To-Shit magic of the wannabee prime minister.

This Tracey May shit, this mad, screeching  old crow, vowing to eradicate something which no-one has been able to eradicate for at least two thousand years, even by the miserable standards of the Coalition of Greed, this takes some beating. She can't even  manage to count the immigrants in and the emigrants out, how's she going to perform this miracle.  Doesn't matter, logic, history, none of that matters,

Have-nagilah, have-nagilah, have-nagilah
ve-nismeha.

cos Tracey, the dancing queen, is  gonna stomp out anti-Semitism;
even though the Jews don't want it stamped-out, it is central to their faith, their scriptures and their politics, their exceptionalism, as God's favourites, just them, mind, not us, for even though their connection, one to the other, is religious, they insist, bizarrely,  that they are a race; a mad, inverse racism. A race is something that one cannot convert to. But never mind that. What's love got to do with it, one for another? Those mad fuckers'll see us all blown to Hell, Jews, Arabs and  Christians; Abrahamians, what are they good for?

Burbling about Freedom, what they're interested in, all of them,  those orchestrating Charlieism and Hymieism,  is ever greater control, ever greater censorship, ever more intrusive and brutal, militarised  policing.  The NewPeople, of course, complicit in their own degradation, believe whatever they are told, as long as it's vaguely sentimental, each passing, viral banality a Beautiful Obsession.

I am so often reminded by current events of George Steiner's remark that the Holocaust happened because the 'thirties Berlin intelligentsia was too busy listening to the string quartet in the salon to hear the cry in the street; the NewPeople,  shoulder-to-shouldering, are equally immune to Reality's signature notes, indifferent, in their stupidity, to the hot breath on their cheeks, of the Jihad. Serve 'em right if Ahmed, bringing it all back home,  visits their local Free School or worst of all possible big bads, takes a stroll through the quadrangles of Harrow or Eton or the colleges of Cambridge.

Always dreaming of another, vaguely better, more reformist world, we are told, endlessly,  that there was a time, before photography, an eighteenth and nineteenth century time, of pamphleteers and broadsheeters, when cartoons made monarchs quake and politicians cower but there never was such a time, political satire has never meant anything, never achieved anything, always been done amongst and to a tiny,  political chattering class, then, as now, gleefully and pointlessly fucking its own arse. And the self-acclaimed successor, the inheritor of this mythical, satirical greatness is the public schoolboys' co-operative known as  Private Eye, itself so radical that it  engages in some  annual, Westminster Oscars-giving political celebrity dinner,  its smirking editor nothing more than  a wealthy, Oxbridge PBC Tory on a nice little earner, Villainy's licensed Fool, pretending to be bold, rather like wotsisname, the pub landlord, rather like this jerk
 
Apres moi, le deluge racialiste.

leading his friends and employees to  a bloody, pointless death;  bestowing their friends and family  grief and bereaevement and gifting to the PBC, skymadeupnewsandfilth, C4 News and the entire ghastly political elastiblshment, at home and abroad an unexpected but entirely welcome New Year thoughts'n'prayers  jamboree. 

I would rather they were all still alive, the doodlers; I'd rather that Obama shut Guantanamo, jailed the CIA torturers, that Bibi stopped expanding into Palestine and that......fuck it, it doesn't matter, what I'd rather.  mr mongoose and others have described this as  the time of the Islamic Reformation;  we had ours, we may not deny them theirs, no matter how hard we try.

  JeSuising his scabby arse off, Hislop said, last week, that nothing seemed very funny, just now; 


welcome, FatBoy, to the real world.

30 comments:

Mike said...

Worked in Paris for a while in the late 80s on assignment from London. Although on (generous) expenses, I chose to stay in a downmarket B&B in Montmartre run by 2 Arab brothers, and my favorite evening meal was couscous Royale in a nearby Arab eaterie. I often used to walk (2 hours) to my offices off the Champs Elysees. Probably wouldn't be wise to do that now?

I didn't mind the Arabs, but couldn't stand the arrogant frogs I had to work with. They could barely disguise their hatred for les Rosbifs, and their sense of superiority.

call me ishmael said...

That's interestingly anachronistic. Never quite know what it is that they are arrogant about, mr mike, 'snot Agincourt, is it, or Waterloo or the Maginot Line, surely?

I do like Arabic string music, if that's the term, Morroccan, anyway, strange drones and tunings, a big influence on British players like Davey Graham and Nick Drake but I am woefully ignorant, otherwise, of that culture.

Mike said...

Coincidentally, in my little episode, the client was Lebanese. Although my French was good, it was not up to the speed and colloquialisms of the native Pariaians. Early on they used this as a tactic in a meeting with the client to make me look a prick. Afterwards, I had to make clear with one of the French directors that if he tried that trick again, I would set aside my English good manners and thump him.

I put the arrogance down to a deep rooted sence of inferiority, no doubt rooted in the historical failures you list, Mr I.

Mind you, it probably didn't help that the client insisted the project be headed out of London, not Paris.

call me ishmael said...

Like many, I am Norman-French, myself, a thousand years back but I always think them inferior, maybe it's the toilets, maybe it's that they eat absolutely any old shit-creatures which they can dredge-up from the seafloor, Christ, those fish markets made me puke. I was in Brest, once, looking at those massive U-boat pens, shouldering their way up, out of the harbour, and it being lunchtime, the whole fucking place, Brest, was shut for two hours, nobody seemed to give a fuck about business or tourism. Nice work, if you can get it.

suki said...

I was born in Morocco to Arab parents and left at the age of 12 along with my mother and brothers to join my father in France where he was working a low paid job in a car factory, and living in a tiny flat in a bourgeois tiny town in the Alps. It felt like the light dimmed the moment I stepped foot in my new country...well, at least I thought it was MY country considering that my father took a bullet for France in the Indo-China war. The fuck it was! I did not like the place or the stuffy people and the fact that i was made constantly aware of being different, and i became withdrawn and depressed for the next 5 years. At age 17, I thought "fuck this place" and I left for London where difference and strangeness at the time was the norm. 24 years later, I am still living in London. I have never felt out of place here, until now.

suki said...

I forgot to say that I am a non religious Arab woman. The morocco I grew up in cared more about tradition than religion. My parents never cared whether I prayed or dressed in a djellabah or a dress, or that I was hetero or lesbian, or that I marry or not. They cared about my school grades though.

Fuck you Charlie!
"I am Brian...and so is my wife"

Anonymous said...

Someone somewhere, surely, please God, in all those crowds had a "Je suis con, moi aussi" placard?

Well said, Suki. Fuck Charlie, and all his aunts.

(Oh, and Google "Paris massacre 1961" for an eye-opener. I knew the Algerian War was an ugly business but I hadn't known about this bit.)

Never cared much for cartoonists, though I can't seem to grow out of an abiding fondness for "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas". Comix, on the other hand - that's more like it. From the batshit whimsy of Hunt Emerson to the glorious filth of S.Clay Wilson, these are proper penmen.

verge.//









mongoose said...

The human rights lovers of Argentina are Je Suis-ing their suicided prosecutor this evening I see. Nothing like a meme to get us all in this together.

suki said...

I am pretty sure all those placards are saying "Je suçe Charlie"...

Thanks for info Anony. Didn't know that.

Bungalow Bill said...

Yes the graceless old bastard de Gaulle is an apt hero and a fine emblem for the post-war settlement. All honour grandly set aside so the Important Ones might gather at various agreeable locations and plot how best to shit on the rest of us.

We unreconstructed Marxists say that it was always so but at least there was no pretence of serving democracy at the Congress of Vienna.

Damn them all, the smug Euro Princes, the mad generals of the United States of Israel and the Saudi Playboys of Decapitation. Oh, and all the other ones you mention Mr I, and the Chinese.

Hope you've started to fix things after the Great Wind.

SG said...

Don't seem to be able to connect to YouTube but if you can, this is for you Mr BB:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf900xcfzRk

call me ishmael said...

I, too, mr verge, have an epochal nostalgia for FALILA, I can see it, from here, alongside Despatches, but it's the mad, old fuck, Thompson, who charms. There was some amazing American writing, back then, rock critic, Lester Bangs, was a favourite and I'm just looking at Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati, The Eye In The Pyramid, although it's not holding up too well, so far. They'll all make great landfill.

call me ishmael said...

Don't know where or if London is, anymore, ms suki but you are welcome here, kind stranger.

call me ishmael said...

Can't add to that, mr bungalow bill and don't need to; although my current rage is more at the herd in the street, than at the farmers, prodding them with their own stupidity.

Bungalow Bill said...

Can't make the link either Mr SG but I'll try again later and thanks.

Yes the herd, Mr I. The lumpen proletariat is now (sort of) literate and watches the news but it's still in stupefied serfdom.

By the way: " each passing viral banality, a Beautiful Obsession". Superb thank you.

Anonymous said...

A friend across the water just drew my attention to another example of - I was about to call it barking madness but that would be an affront to dogs. Her name (the example, not my informant) is Ann Barnhart and a google image search will give you the general idea (pink submachine gun, setting fire to a Koran etc) while a visit to the ghastly bitch's blog is a useful reminder, if such be needed, of how repellent Righteous America can be when it gets its rattle out.

verge.//

suki said...

Thank you for the warm welcome Mr Ishmael. I have been lurking here for a while now. Love this blog. I love the humour, the irreverence, and your ability to see right through the bullshit.

Cheers

jgm2 said...

Where did this 'Je suis juif' nonsense spring from?

The fuckers are no better than the religion of peace. Any time there's a massacre like this Charlie Hebdo business it's not long before you have some bearded cunt or some superficially westernised bint on the telly swooning about how Muslims are the real victims in all this. Just like when Gerry Adams would get tackled about the latest pub bombing or shop bombing and start giving it 'What you have to remember is..[random reference to some killing back in 1821]'.

So it is with their big-nosed cousins. A dozen cartoonists get shot and before you know it it's all about the fucking Jews. Half of Poland gets wiped out by Hitler and Stalin. But it's all about the Jews.

I loathe the Religion of Peace with a fervour informed by being an eye-witness on 9/11 so anything that challenges their belief that they're the fucking master race gets a big thumbs up from me.

I feel bad for the cartoonists and their families but, like you, I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if every 'journalist' in the UK was swinging from a lamp-post. Good for fuck all. Telling us how Katie Price is having a spat with some other never-was while turning a blind eye to the systematic economic and social destruction of the nation.

Je suis Juif?

Oh do fuck off.

No better than that twat Miliband and his 'This is what a feminist looks like' t-shirt.

call me ishmael said...

It sprang, I suspect, mr jgm2, from the fact that both front benches are owned by Friends of Israel and that hundreds of lesser, backbench reptiles enjoy extraordinarily generous bungs, gifts, tickets and Israeli-funded holidays in Israel, I mean fact-finding missions to the Middle East.

I don't know if it's part of a wider Bilderberg network but it is well documented, I think I might have, unusually for me, linked to a Peter Oborne piece about it, a while back but just Google Westminster Friends of Israel, do you blood pressure no end of good.

Remember Gordon Brown and David Abrahams? I wonder if that bung ever was paid-back.

I get terribly confused about my being so opposed to Israeli policy, outraged by corrupt Israeli influence in my parliament, whilst simultaneously having been horrified every second of my life by the the Death Camps.

I guess it's the presumption, by Judaism, of the Outright Ownership of Sorrow which bothers me; millions killed by Mao, millions killed by Stalin, homosexuals, gypsies, trade unionists, intellectuals and disabled people, also slaughtered by Hitler but somehow the Books of Sorrow have been cooked, so that, as you say, it is always the Jews, who, owning it, may not be challenged.

call me ishmael said...

Yes, mr verge, she makes Eskimo Nell look liberal and thoughtful, and Palin was at least funny. Trouble with all the rightwing nutjobs is that if you kinda squint your mind, like you can your eyes, you can just about see what they're on about. I'm sure tha IRS DOES go after unruly rednecks; I am sure Obama IS Money's Stooge but I am sure, also, that there is no business like showbusiness and that is what Ms Barnhadt is really engaged in. Love the pink assault rifle, Charlton Heston de nos jours.

SG said...



Well I'd never heard of Charlie Hebdo until a few years ago when it was brought to the MSM's attention by some previous episode of offence taking by folks claiming to be followers of the Religion of Peace. Cue violent demonstrations, book burning, attacks on churches, slaughter of members of religious minorities and beheading of Sudanese teddy bears by the angry 'Ummah'. All this because some left wing atheists print some not very funny and / or distasteful cartoons in a magazine with a circulation of c. 60,000 - ergo read by 0.01% of the French population. By God, they must have had to look hard. Mary Whitehouse eat your heart out. I bet there are student rags with bigger circulations. You'd probably have to be a subscriber to see the offending articles as I doubt this thing is sat on the supermarket top- shelf next to the lads mags. Personally, I don't find Hebdo funny - my tastes are too Anglo- Saxon for that (give me Viz any day) and some of the material is not just offensive but gratutiously offensive. Offense is good when it is used to expose the lies, hypocracy and humbug of the influential or powerful, whether they be people or institutions (as you do so well here Mr I). I don't like gratutious offence but ultimately I feel we should defend the right to deliver it, and retribution should come in the form of a robust reply and, in some cases, application of the law, not death dealt out by self appointed judge-executioners. I'll take my medication now - one large glass of Vin Rouge administered slowly. Vive la France!

Welcome Suki, by the way, hope you stick around.

mongoose said...

There is a piece in The Times today by Dan Finkelstein. (He's not hiding his heritage, is he?) It's a man's story of his grandma buying her, his mum's and his aunts' out of Belsen and across the border into Switzerland before promptly dropping dead that very night. So that's a grandma and a mum, just some Jews, it's not even some disconnected Taig slaughtered out on the bog some lifetimes ago now. No excuse for Israel's crimes these long years as discussed above but reason enough for the personal.

But it is a hijack. And by them all, the bastards. Cartoonists, Jews, politicians, the prettily jackbooted Theresa May, all of them. Jesus, if Cameron cannot even get the yanks to agree to his mad level of communications surveillance, this should be a clue that we are straying a long way from the path.

SG said...

Sorry Mr BB it was just a link to 'The Day of the Jackal'. All that talk of De Gaulle and Algeria... the OAS... I love that movie even if Forsyth is a Daily Expressing, Nut-Kipping nutter...

Anonymous said...

Instead of killing the cartoonists, the, errr, alleged fanatics should have sent Martin Brunt to ambush them outside the office on camera and berate them for trolling Mohamed and for generally being unfunny and plain racist. He would have told those proponents of selective spiel that Interpol has their Dossier, and that he was going to make sure the whole world and twitter put a face to their trolling names. Pretty soon those cartoonists would have been found hanged in a hotel room. Problem solved.

Thanks SG.

Suki

call me ishmael said...

One wonders, what exactly is the role of the PBC's French correspondents, the people we pay to live in France, when, at the drop of a small massacre, most of the PBC journos fly off to Paris to usurp the roles of those already stationed there?Emily was there, Luce had flown in, Huw Welshman abandoned the Six o Clock News to give us the Paris lowdown. Kay Bully was there, from skymadeupnewsandfilth; Jon Sox was wetting himself, like he does and yes, Martin Brunson, sky's shameless attack dog, was there, too, such a disappointment that the Brothers Wotsit didn't find a moment to pop a round up his poxy arse.

call me ishmael said...

Brunt.

SG said...

Now the Radio 4 'Today' Programme's Humphrys is in Athens... It goes on and on does the gravy train Mr I...

call me ishmael said...

Just as long as they manage to get a bit of shopping done, eh, and perhaps a nice meal or two.

call me ishmael said...

Maybe, mr mongoose, we and/or Israel are just warming up to invade Iran, ancient Persia, and stirring vengefuf Hatred's pot; it was the arabs, after all, behind the. Holocaust.

mongoose said...

I am not sure that Israel has the manpower to inavde anywhere, Mr Ishmael. Except perhaps Israel. And I think that they have the territory they want.

OTOH the cultural invasion of muslim society is the flipside of what this is all about. The oxymoron known as western civilisation has delivered unimagined health and wealth to ordinary people. (I know that we expect more of our anointed but, jeez, the universal 3Rs and penecillin can take the credit for three-quarters of it, with what shakily passes for the Rule of Law bringing up the rear. Fuck the politicians.) And it is not based on superstition and dogma.

Who now younger than me would believe that my mother has never eaten meat on a Friday? Ever! How many would even understand what I am on about? It is over and while beheading folk on the i-telly is fearsome and frightening, why, we used to burn ours in the street - further on up the road a ways, in the Broad even in Oxford, with thousands of short and brutish mediaeval tourists gawping at the bloody awful spectacle. Do you think Jihadi John will get a stone set in the pavement somewhere?