From: The Unit
To: GB
Subject: Cartoons
So, pretty good week. Think there's a very real prospect the media may become bored with the story of Cameron's total political dominance and tactical mastery and we could see the return of a few small-scale, page 7 stories about the government and some of the things we've been doing. We need to capitalise on this and turn a dead-cat bounce into a very real alive-cat-on-a-trampoline-wearing-a-jetpack bounce.
Thinking of angles for us: re the Obama New Yorker kerfuffle, we wondered if there was any margin for us in your representation in political cartoons?
Jonkin, the work experience person, provides a representative cross-section of the past year's cartoons:
Times - July 2007
GB is pictured as a knight on horseback with a clunking fist marked "fiscal probity"and a shield marked "economy". GB punches dead a triple-headed dragon/ghost with the faces of Blair, a flood and Osama Bin Laden. The piece is entitled "In Gord We Trust". In the background somebody from Big Brother is giving Steve McClaren a bag of dog food: the news story on which this comments has evaporated from recorded history.
Mail - October 2007
GB is trying to shove a "cake of electoral indecision" into a ballot box. Waiting to eat the cake inside the box, for some reason, is an EU bureaucrat who is sitting in a chair made of money, laughing.
Independent - December 2007
GB is riding with the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, drinking oil/blood that drips from a dove of peace in the shape of an oil well, which is being strangled and wrung dry by someone who is either David Miliband, Yvette Cooper or David Walliams. GB is also eating a string of sausages marked "Postwar social settlement" and laughing.
Telegraph - March 2008
GB is shoving a petrol nozzle into the mouth of a skeleton wearing a tattered T-shirt with the logo "Electorate" across it. He is also defecating a stream of substance marked "Hypocrisy" into the mouth of a malnourished African child. And laughing.
Guardian - July 2008
GB is pictured drinking blood, not laughing, while performing anal sex on a dove of peace, which is squawking the single word "Prudence" with each thrust. He is standing by a heap of skulls marked "Darfur etc". He is crying, but each tear is drawn in the shape of a crocodile and also additionally marked for added clarity with the identifying phrase "crocodile tear".
Policy Conclusions: Most cartoonists seem to be in favour of more equitable treatment of the dove of peace. Also there is a general feeling that you should not engage in foreign policy moves that easily equate with the drinking of human blood.
Let us know your thoughts.
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