Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Mail Day, part 6: Cartoons

I mentioned cartoons earlier, as I began my journey through the dead-tree pages of our favourite daily paper, and since these are things you often can only find in the printed version, I was keen to see what else my 50pence piece had paid for today.

It's not great news, I'm afraid to say. There's this spectacularly bland effort to try and make the point that New Labour and Gordon Brown are being controlled by the unions:

If you're not familiar with the works of Paul Thomas of the Express, then you could do a lot worse than plough through the Mailwatch 'Critical Analysis of the Express Cartoon Thread' here. What that goes to show, other than the fact that Gordon Brown apparently vibrates, is that our PM isn't entirely easy to draw. I mean, Mac's had a go, above, but it just looks like Adrian Chiles in mid-vomit, or a slightly flattened Gary Lineker, and nothing like our Gordy.

I don't want to be too critical, because I know I couldn't get it right. He'd end up looking like a right old mess. Mind you, I'm not a cartoonist for a national newspaper, am I?

Perhaps Fred Bassett will be better. Ah, Fred Bassett. It's why some people buy the Mail, no doubt. A nice friendly dog and a bit of a joke. What could possibly go wro... oh.

I love the way that under that especially pisspoor cartoon comes the plea to buy the Fred Bassett book. "A whole book of that disappointing shit?" Mail readers are probably saying to themselves. "I don't fucking think so!" And yes, the 'meat and 2 veg' one underneath is, well, it's certainly, yes.

I don't know why but I had hoped for a bit more from the cartoons. I know the original Fred Bassett man had died, but it doesn't even make sense any more. It's just some words being spoken by a couple of dogs. Not even good words, that make any sense at all. Just like real life sentences, but more insipid.

I'm not sure if this 50p was entirely well spent. That's the thing. Even if I enjoyed the hatred of Labour and the Trojan horse misogyny of Femail (of which more later), I'd still think the cartoons were a bit tripey. Shame.

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Related posts:

1. Mail Day, part 13: The end
2. Mail Day, part 1: Bin there, done that
3. Mail Day, part 9: Here’s the bit I liked most
4. Mail Day, part 10: And…?
5. Mail Day, part 8: Can’t be fucked to Google it