Thursday, August 12, 2010

Bad Taste of the Town

Editorial cartoonists, by custom, are allowed a degree of freedom which other newspaper staff do not enjoy. That said, one has to wonder why nobody at the Herald told Rod Emmerson to go away and draw something else when they saw this cartoon. Or is the typical Auckland reaction to any crisis - "yes, but what about our house prices" - now editorial policy at the Herald?

Think how this one might play in Karam Pur, a village in the Sindh province. Not that well, given that the village no longer exists and I expect this family have more to worry about than property prices. Perhaps the Herald should talk to one of the 14 million people affected by the floods, such as mother of six Sabhagi Khatoon:
"We have nothing to eat, nothing to live in. We've been starving for days, so the start of Ramadan doesn't bring any joy.

"We used to celebrate Ramadan in a big way in our village, but my children and I are already starving. We need food, so we're already fasting in a way."
So what might someone Pakistan think of Aucklanders? Might it be something along the lines of "you selfish, whining pricks? [Wrong] And what might they think of our Government, which has donated nothing? [/Wrong: see Terence's comment]Might it be something like "obviously, we are only good for cricket?

I think we should be told.

Art historical note: my title comes from a much better satirist than Rod Emmerson: William Hogarth

5 comments:

Robyn said...

Do you suppose hard-working Kiwi families, snowed under by household debt, will start seeking refugee status in developing countries?

terence said...

To be fair we are, apparently giving NZ$2 million. See: http://tinyurl.com/27kmrsg

OTOH - I agree about the creepy false equivalence.

Paul said...

How right you are, Terence; how wrong I was. Thank you.

Robyn, I often wonder why so many hard-working kiwi battlers are constantly moaning about living conditions here, yet they never leave.

Keri H said...

Because - even with the current shitty plutocrat government, and all the other things that 'hardworking kiwi battlers' have to deal with - we actually really like it here? Even, love this archipelago?

terence said...

"how wrong I was." - well not that wrong. At 0.0011% of GDP no one will be mistaking our response as generous anytime soon. Particularly, as the money presumably comes from our already allocated annual aid budget (i.e. so somewhere a Peter will be robbed to pay for our kindness to Paul).