shoes

Tuesday February 8, 2011

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 8, 2011

Hosni Mubarak offers pay rise to buy time

THE Mubarak regime has tried to win over Egypt’s popular uprising by announcing a 15 per cent increase in pay and pensions for public servants.

February 3, 2011

In the first meeting of the cabinet since the uprising began on January 25, the government of President Hosni Mubarak announced yesterday that the increase would begin from April.

In another gesture, the police said they had released Wael Ghonim, the head of Google’s Middle East operations, who has become a figurehead of the revolt after organising a Facebook page for protesters.

He had been detained while taking part in protests and held incommunicado and without charge under the reviled emergency law that has been in place for three decades.

Mr Mubarak also pledged to launch an “independent” investigation into deadly violence between his supporters and demonstrators last Wednesday at Tahrir Square that left 11 dead and nearly 1000 injured, according to official estimates.

The President “has given instructions for the creation of a . . . transparent, independent and impartial investigatory commission,” the official news agency MENA reported. The commission will investigate “the terrible and unacceptable violations that made some protesters innocent victims”, it said.

The pay hike might buy Mr Mubarak some time by reassuring his partisans in Egypt’s large bureaucracy and security forces but there was no sign that the demonstrators were ready to cede ground. Campaigners sat under the tracks of army tanks deployed around the square. Activists also kept up the pressure by barring access to the Mugamma, the heart of Egypt’s bureaucracy, which dominates the square. (The Australia)

 

April 17, 2008

My boss declared with amazement this morning that a whole day went by and he didn’t hear one single complaint about yesterday’s cartoon as shown above. It’s the same boss who, early in his role as the Spec’s editorial page balked at running a relatively tame cartoon I drew around the death of Pope John Paul II. The incident of its spiking even got the attention of the author David Wallis, who included it in his 2006 book entitled “Killed Cartoons“.

Anyway, a colleague here suggested the reason I’m not getting feedback on the red shoe cartoon is because most of the area’s defensive Roman Catholics are in the midst of their pilgrimages to Washington D.C. and New York City. However, it seems the newspapers I syndicate are taking a pass on running.

I just received one letter of outrage:

As much as I am a fan of Graeme MacKay’s political cartoons I do feel that this one is pushing the boundaries as far as is possible without inciting riots la Danish cartoons negatively portraying Mohammad.

I am certainly no George W. Bush sympathizer but depicting him as the devil does seem to be pushing those aforementioned boundaries. Furthermore, the cartoon also paints the Prada-wearing Pope in a negative light. As the cartoon certainly seems to be a reference to the hit movie The Devil Wears Prada, are we to assume MacKay sees both men as instruments of darkness? As a Catholic, this cartoon deeply offends me and I hope in the future MacKay thinks twice before attacking the spiritual leader of one billion people.

Marco Fortino, Hamilton