Satire & Humour
Satire & Humour
"Humour can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle." GK Chesterton
This page is new: it will take some time before it will be possible to achieve a fair and balanced presentation of images / ideas. Constructive comments and suggestions always welcome!
Page Content
1 Cartoons
"A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with
making truth itself appear like falsehood." William Shenstone
making truth itself appear like falsehood." William Shenstone
Here's a selection of cartoons, images and quotes concerned with 'fake news', lies and disinformation. Some focus on the personalities involved and their utterances or behaviour; others provide a powerful comment on important issues, such as attitudes to the media or the nature of 'truth'. The artwork is either available under Creative Commons licenses or paid for by this website or by supporters, or permission has been obtained directly from the artist.
If you'd like to help, press the purple hexagon for a list of cartoons and other images that I'd like to be able to display on the website.
1.1 Satire & 'Fake News'
'The Cow Pock - or - the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!' by Gillray [12 Jun 1802].[2]
Detail from The Fin de Siècle Newspaper Proprietor, an illustration featured in an 1894 issue of Puck
magazine. Amid the flurry of eager paper-clutching public, one holds a publication brandished with the words "Fake News".
1.2 Commenting on the Powerful
Vladimir Putin
"In Russian culture a distinction is drawn between two kinds of lies, vranyo
and lozh
which do not have exact parallels in English. Vranyo
has been claimed as uniquely Russian, and seems to consist of telling untrue but credible stories, a practice not condemned by those who recognize what is going on. Indeed, for success in vranyo-telling, there must be a listener who pretends to believe in the truth of what is being said. [...] Lozh, on the other hand, implies a conscious intention to deceive."
John Arundel Barnes
in
'A pack of lies: towards a sociology of lying'
For two plausible examples of vranyo see Lies & Lying.
Donald Trump
The New York-based writer and comedian Sarah Cooper
makes videos that savagely lampoon some of President Trump’s most ridiculous moments. In this clip she uses her living-room lamp and household cleaner as props: “Supposing you brought the light inside the body, either through the skin or in some other way” – at which point she gestures at her mouth before miming inserting a suppository. The clip went viral: in Aug 2020 it had more than 750,000 views on TikTok
and more than 21 million on Twitter.
Boris Johnson
Peter Oborne and several of his journalist colleagues set up a website
specificaly dedicated to "the lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations of Boris Johnson and his government".
The website includes a useful Mission Statement.
Mark Zuckerberg
Other Celebrities
Ivanka Trump
After Ivanka Trump tried to insert herself into a conversation between world leaders at the G20 in Osaka in June 2019 she was mercilessly ridiculed and #Unwanted Ivanka
went viral. You will find some examples of Ivanka being photoshopped into well-known historical images:
NSatire is a highly effective tool for exposing lies, ignorance, dogma, humbug and privilege.
1.3 Commenting on Life in the Digital Age
What's True Anymore?
Democracy, Politics & The Media
A topical float on 'democracy in danger' at the Shrove Monday carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, 27 February 2017.
Emotional Truths
The Nature of Truth
There's a discussion of what we mean by 'truth' on a separate page.
2 Humorous Quotes & Put Downs
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made."
Groucho Marx
"Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people."
Thomas L Masson
"It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you."
Will Rogers
3 No Laughing Matter
Satire is proving really difficult for legislators to deal with — except in autocracies like North Korea, Saudi Arabia and China where you risk being fined or imprisoned, or something worse...[3]
Let me close this page by giving a mention to Clowns Without Borders
whose vision is: "to create a world where all people can experience laughter, play, and feel hope, especially in humanitarian crises."[4]
Where would we be without satire and humour?
Credits
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"Flying Pigs" by BugMan50 is licensed with CC BY-NC 2.0.
1.1 Satire & 'Fake News'
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This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Information from its description page is shown here.
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"fake-news-detail-2" by The Public Domain Review is marked under CC PDM 1.0.
1.2 Commenting on Personalities
Politicians
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Russia and 2016 tampering COLOR by Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com
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Trump fake news by Tom Janssen, The Netherlands Politicalcartoons.com
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Enemy of the People by Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune, UT
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Boris Johnson as Pinocchio by Matt Brown (taken 27 Nov 2019) CC BY 2.0
Business Leaders
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Facebook data breach by Dave Granlund, PoliticalCartoons.com
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Facebook and fake news by Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE
1.3 Commenting on Life in the Digital Age
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Intelligence check has verified your comment. It's polemical, devoid of facts and completely stupid. You can now post it on social media. by Karsten Schley CartoonStock.com
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'My name is Fifi, I'm an eighteen year old lingerie model' by Mark Lynch CartoonStock.com
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Raupen Essen grünes Blatt, Feinde der Demokratie, Putin, Erdogan, Trump, Orban, Kaczinsky, politische Karikatur, Pappmaché Bild-ID: HT8F2W
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"shoot down the dictator" by - HOGRE - is marked under CC PDM 1.0.
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Cartoon by Cathy Wilcox
for UNESCO for World Press Freedom Day 2017. Reproduced with permission.
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'The BS Asymmetric Principle' by Jono Hey - sketchplanations.com
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License
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Patriotism vs. Nationalism by Jen Sorensen for Comics
[14 Nov 2017]
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'An enlightenment seeker heads back from Truth lookign shocked'
by Charles
Barsotti [New Yorker, 24 Apr 2006]
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'A person seeking truth walks on a treadmill' by Charles
Barsotti [New Yorker, 16 Apr 2007]
2 Wish List
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'Two Guys Bowing' by j4p4n [OpenClipArt, 24 Feb 2017]
3 Humorous Quotes & Putdowns
# "You can go on the air (Groucho Marx)" by Wasfi Akab is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
4 No Laughing Matter
# "Politicians, presidents and dictators like Kim Jong-un, Trump, Xi Jin Ping, Boris Johnson and Wladimir Putin set the world on fire on satiric carnivals wagon" by verchmarco is licensed with CC BY 2.0.
Notes
1 Chinese blogger Wang Jiangfeng ended up with a two year prison sentence
for reportedly calling President Xi a 'steamed bun' on private chat groups and referring to Chairman Mao as 'Bandit Mao'. Use of the term 'Rupert Bear' can also land people in a lot of trouble in China as it's a banned nickname for the President.
2 In this cartoon, the British satirist James Gillray caricatured a scene at the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital at St. Pancras, showing cowpox vaccine being administered to frightened young women, and cows emerging from different parts of people's bodies. The cartoon was inspired by the controversy over inoculating against the dreaded disease, smallpox. Opponents of vaccination had depicted cases of vaccinees developing bovine features and this is picked up and exaggerated by Gillray.
3 In Sept 2018 the Public Prosecutor in Saudi Arabia announced
that "producing and distributing content that ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religious values and public morals through social media... will be considered a cybercrime punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of three million riyals ($800,000)."
3 Clowns Without Borders International
has chapters in fifteen countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States).
