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Plum-Pudding in Danger by James Gillray

Recently, I got a nice up-close look at “The Plum-Pudding in Danger”, one of the most famous/important editorial cartoons in the English speaking world.

 
“The satirical prints of James Gillray were as eagerly viewed for their take on current events as any newspaper in the Georgian era. Gillray’s celebrated satire, ‘The Plumb-pudding in danger’, shows British Prime Minister William Pitt and Emperor Napoleon of France carving up the globe. The illustration is detailed but the point is clear – the age of Western imperialism was underway.” – ‘Breaking the News’ exhibit, The British Library
 
For hundreds of years we do what we draw because of trail blazers like James Gillray. Help keep it going #supportsatire
 

Photo by Graeme MacKay

 
The Plum-Pudding in Danger; or, State epicures taking un petit souper – “The great globe itself, and all which is too small to satisfy such insatiable appetites.”

To personify this humorous design with license, we might say, to use the school boy’s phrase, these two were “deep dogs at pudding,” and took special care to leave little in the dish worth having, for those who were to sit down to their leavings. Billy looks at Boney’s carving tool, and opening his eyes with amazement, says to himself, -O! O! Mr. Greedygut! To be sure he is helping himself to a slice where the plums are found to be thickest. But the other, determined to he a match for him, slips in his cocteau, and very modestly divides the pudding in half, where ’tis richest in spice and sweetmeats, and with a look that seems to imply there is yet enough for ” cut and come again.”

A plum-pudding has been compared to many things, and not unaptly, amongst others, to a civilized nation, The sweet-meats being assigned to the king and his courtiers; the plums and currants to the law; the eggs to the church ; the nutmeg to the army, and the brandy to the navy: the suet to trade, with here and there a plum for a fat alderman; the sight and smell alone for genius and taste, and the scrapings of the pudding-bag for the labouring poor.

On looking upon these two dividers of the smoking orb, and associating with the print, the circumstances of the times that gave rise to it, we can scarcely believe that the whole was not a dream; or that the events, now that the world is at peace again, were of much more importance, with all the mighty deeds of the one in the cabinet and the other in the field, which divided the world, than the dividing a plum-pudding: yet, have the satellites of each, flattered these champions with the never ceasing plaudits of posterity, or in other words, with the unfading glory of immortality.

This book (1805) was on display at: Breaking the News Exhibit (Closes Aug 21, 2022) at the British Library, London.

Thursday June 23, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 23, 2022

Rwanda is a brutal, repressive regime. Holding the Commonwealth summit there is a sham

Back when I was a reporter based in Africa in the 1990s, there were two organisations whose meetings regularly took place amid widespread media indifference: the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Commonwealth.

August 12, 2005

There were solid reasons for our lack of enthusiasm. Such get-togethers were strong on pomp and rigmarole, but the interesting decisions usually took place behind closed doors. Both organisations were widely seen as little more than dictators’ clubs, attuned to the interests of ruling elites while aloof from the millions of citizens they nominally represented.

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Kigali, Rwanda this week will do nothing to challenge those assumptions.

Held in a country primed to receive Britain’s unwanted migrants – a deal that even Prince Charles, who will be chairing for the first time, apparently regards as “appalling” – the meeting will highlight the weaknesses of the organisation on which Britain is pinning its hopes of future global relevance.

In the run-up to the EU referendum, Brexiters talked up the benefits of ditching the EU in favour of a market that – thanks to the vastness of Britain’s defunct empire – holds 2.5 billion consumers, a third of the global population. And, since Brexit, it is true that free-trade agreements have been signed with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, while a host of other deals are being negotiated with members of the 54-nation association.

Thursday June 16, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 16, 2022

Putin has weaponized food. The global death toll could be staggering

Ukraine has long forged a reputation as the planet’s bread basket.

May 14, 2022

Before being invaded by Russia in February, it exported 4.5 million tonnes of agricultural produce through its ports each month, including 12 per cent of the world’s wheat, 15 per cent of its corn and 50 per cent of its sunflower oil. It’s capable of feeding 400 million people every year, not including its own population.

Not long ago, Ukraine exported up to six million tonnes of grain per month. Today, that figure is only 1.5 million.

The reason: Russia’s naval blockade of Black Sea ports makes it impossible for Ukraine to sell its agricultural products abroad. Meantime, vast swaths of farmland have either been taken over by Russian occupiers or been littered with mines, rendering the land useless. Ukrainian officials now estimate there are 25 million tonnes of grain stuck in storehouses. By September, it’s estimated that tens of millions of tonnes of grain will be entombed inside Ukraine and will likely rot.

“For people around the world, the war, together with the other crises, is threatening to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake,” says United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

April 12, 2022

The UN estimates that the war could move nearly 50 million people in several countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East into famine or famine-like conditions because of its horrific impact on supply and prices.

And this is all a very calculated act by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Putin has weaponized food and is now blackmailing the world with it. He has said he would end the Black Sea blockade if the West drops its sanctions. Of course, even as he says this he knows it’s a non-starter. Dropping those sanctions would only help fill Russia’s financial coffers and allow it to move even more aggressively into Ukraine.

Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University, believes Mr. Putin is banking on food shortages to ignite riots in many countries. It could lead to an exodus of starving refugees in the direction of Europe, creating instability and chaos.

This will put even more pressure on the West to drop the sanctions and broker a ceasefire agreement in the name of world peace. At this point, Mr. Putin would likely take whatever territorial gains he’s made in Ukraine and call it a day.

It’s pure evil, but hardly original.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin manufactured a famine in Ukraine in 1932, in an attempt, some believe, to stamp out a nascent independence movement. Upwards of five million Ukrainians starved to death in an event remembered today as Holodomor, or the Terror Famine. In Ukraine, it is considered a genocide. Adolf Hitler, meantime, had plans to redirect Ukrainian grain for the Soviet Union to Germany in the hopes of starving millions of Soviet citizens. (Continued: The Globe & Mail) 

 

Wednesday May 10, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 10, 2022

As cost of living soars, affordability becomes top Ontario election issue

August 14, 2014

In every Ontario election poll that’s publicly available, the number one concern of voters is the rising cost of living. 

Affordability has rocketed past the perennial top issues of health — even after two years of a global pandemic — and jobs, with the unemployment rate at record lows. 

While the Ontario party leaders are often talking on the campaign trail about making life more affordable, it’s a wonder that they’re not hammering the issue even harder, given how strongly it’s resonating with voters.

“The smart politicians won’t just talk about [the cost of living] as an issue, they will understand it’s a character test,” said Greg Lyle, a veteran pollster and president of Innovative Research Group.

Friday May 6, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 6, 2022

The Supreme Court might never recover from overturning Roe v. Wade

October 23, 2020

On Monday, Politico published a draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling declaring that the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to end their pregnancies. The court later confirmed that the document, written in February, is genuine, but emphasized that it is not the court’s final word. We hope not. If the justices embrace the sweeping document, they will deal a grievous blow to freedom in the United States — and to the legitimacy of the court itself.

Such a leak from the court’s typically tight inner sanctum is itself astonishing. The court works on trust among justices and staff, so that the justices can deliberate frankly. Whether the document leaked from a conservative justice’s chambers, in an effort to lock in the support of others on the right for its far-reaching language, or from a liberal’s, in an effort to mobilize outside pressure against such a ruling, the leak represents a dire breakdown in norms and another dramatic sign of the court’s political drift.