Kelly - Hero

Written by:Ben Granger.

 Avid fan that I am of the “form” that is satire, it can also be the most irritating too. The very “irreverence” of its practitioners is paradoxically revered, to the extent that they effectively get a free pass on quality their victims couldn’t dream of. The smell of smugness, always present, is often pungent. Witness recent editions of Bremner, Bird and Fortune to see the tedious self-congratulation to which its three protagonists, each of whom have written and performed good work in the past, can descend. A case of “who watches the watchmen?”, no-one is there prod them from their complacency. It’s not a clear cut thing by any means. All but the most brilliant satire is walking a tightrope between the sharp and the smug. I buy Private Eye religiously, I love it in fact, but it can often go either way (though its still far better than most).

 It’s the same with political cartoons. I have a life-long adoration of this more specialist form too. From Hogarth and Gillray onwards, they’ve always give me a weird thrill. But my God, the shite a lot of these cartoonists get away with. The laboured, obvious, tedious, tendentious, wearisome moralising cack  that sails through. Again, never questioned, because it’s the bold Whoeveritis at work, and anyone who criticises is a grumpy spoilsport, killjoy, etc. etc. etc. Its always particular a joy therefore to see the satirists satirised, and for political cartoonists – very Heaven. That’s why I always shat my sides at a particular section of The Day Today (still the Gold Standard in modern satire) where “Brandt -the Physical Cartoonist from the Daily Telegraph” would crop up to make some hilariously weak and weary point:- “The week Chris Patten – like King Kong – has made a monkey of himself – over Hong Kong.”  

Which all leads to my main point, Brandt has a wonderful successor in “Kelly”, the cartoonist I’ve recently discovered in the evergreen Onion. Just click through his back catalogue and cherish. Drawn in real life by Ward Sutton, this is a hysterical, razor-sharp accurate puncturing of the American conservative cartoonist. As a nerdish studier of the genre the accuracy is devastating (so devastating in fact, that a great many people assume that “Kelly” is real and The Onion is running it as a conservative “counterpoint” to its generally leftish stance. Christ. Its like the Orson’s War of the Worlds broadcast all over.)  The little touches like the constantly weeping Statue of Liberty, are as vital as the surreally moronic banality and bigotry on display. What’s great is how Kelly himself emerges as a surprising fully-fledged character, not just a right-wing propagandist with a woefully misplaced sense of his witty superiority, but also a man whose private life is in fractured freefall with murderous fantasies about his ex-wife – and who assumes that this is as sound “common sense” to his readership as his adulation of Donald Rumsfeld. Superb. A good overview from the LA Times is here incidentally. 

You could counter I only like him so much because he’s sarcastically affirming my own prejudices. No doubt there’s an element of that, but I’d like to think I can appreciate the brilliance in a more even-handed way. I love South Park for instance, which leans right more often than it does left. So if anyone could point me in the way of an “anti-cartoonist” of whatever hue who remotely approaches “Kelly” for quality, please do so. 

Posted on November 15th, 2007.

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• The War on Truth
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