Faces Only Cartoonists Can Love
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday September 26, 1996
Political cartoonists have been blessed in Australia. Bob Hawke must have been designed by a cartoonist - no matter who drew him, he obligingly looked like his cartoon.
John Howard may have been hard to draw at first but he gave cartoonists 20 years to practice, and then kindly went bald just to help make it a little easier.
Bob Carr is so over-endowed with distinctively unattractive features that it is hard for a cartoonist to know which ones to make the most fun of.
These are the musings of Patrick Cook, cartoonist for The Bulletin, speaking yesterday at a cartoonists' seminar in Canberra.
Politicians often grow to look like their caricatures - Paul Keating, in particular - which is "eerie but helpful", Cook said.
The Herald's Cathy Wilcox told the seminar she was often aghast at how cruel her caricatures of Bob Carr could be, even if they were realistic.
Australia's great cartooning tradition of "dealing boldly with authority, by mocking it behind its back" began with the First Fleet.
Australia's earliest history was summarised by cartoons in English broadsheets: initially angry cartoons about the barbarism of shipping convicts to an unknown land, which rapidly changed to rage that convicts living in Australia should have such a good time.
A cartoon from 1787 depicted what Parliament would look like in Australia when run by a bunch of convicts: in Cook's words, "a bunch of hoons and drunks with a strong Irish presence, arguing about the royal family". Strangely prophetic, really.
But cartoonists in the modern era are an endangered species, Cook warned.
"Cartoons, let's face it, are the only things that give journalists' copy credibility".
Thank goodness this story has some.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald