Cartoonist says left are killing satire

John Drinnan writes:

Cartoonist Bill Leak both delighted and caused offence last week with an Oped piece in “The Australian”  He complained eloquently about “authoritarian barbarians of the New Left” and increasing damage wrought by political correctness.

His comments were:

“Progressive fundamentalists now are trying to dictate what’s permissible when it comes to cracking jokes, just like the barbarians of fundamentalist Islam, cartoonists have found themselves on the frontline. We used to be instinctively anti-authoritarian and cynical, which made it almost impossible to offend us, and was the reason Australia became a breeding ground for great cartoonists. But it’s not any more because, instead of manning the barricades against this plague, our cartoonists, with a few honourable exceptions, rushed to embrace it. As ­George Orwell said: “You cannot be really funny if your main aim is to flatter the comfortable classes.” But they do. They want to be cool, they want to be popular; liked on Facebook, followed on Twitter. So at a time when their duty to ­offend has never been more pressing, they go out of their way to ­appease the offendirati by making their cartoons as inoffensive, as ­insipid, as possible.”

Sadly very true.