By no means breaking news, but still a curious and interesting cartoon-related Danish incident: A few weeks ago, Director General of DR (Denmark’s Radio, the state-sponsored public service radio and TV network), Kenneth Plummer, was offended by a cartoon by Roald Als, published in the daily newspaper Politiken. The cartoon depicts Plummer as a lazy watchdog in chains. The sign on his doghouse reads ‘The Dog Bites – not’, and indicates that Plummer is hired to obey the Danish Liberal-conservative Government (but doing a bad job of it). Next to him, with the whip, is the Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen, while Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, dressed in a caveman outfit (as always in Als’ cartoons), says: “He’s a lousy watchdog! A pinko lackey just passed him!” (this refers to the government’s long-held perception of DR as a left-leaning organization).

Plummer felt so offended by this that he emailed Politiken‘s editor-in-chief, Tøger Seidenfaden, to complain about it, asking the latter to instruct the cartoonist to refrain from depicting Plummer that way again. Daily tabloid Ekstra Bladet (same publisher as Politiken) got hold of the email and now claims that Kenneth Plummer feels offended by the depiction of him in chains because his family apparently descends from slaves (Plummer refuses to explain this aspect to Ekstra Bladet‘s reporter, but says his children are having a hard time because of the cartoon)

Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the infamous bomb in the turban from Jyllands-Posten, revisited the controversy a few days ago when he illustrated the printed version of Norwegian writer Hege Storhaug’s speech to the editor responsible for the original printing of the 12 Muhammed cartoons, Flemming Rose when he was awarded the newly-instated, so-called Sappho prize by the Society for Press Freedom. While the society seems to mostly consist of xenophobic cranks for whom scimitar-wielding Ay-rabs rewriting Danish law seems a tangible threat, the cartoon in itself appears to me a much more justified statement of anger and frustration on the part of a cartoonist who was threatened on his life for his provocative and insensitive, but essentially non-xenophobic cartoon. Justifiably angry at this outrage, his latest cartoon is anything but conciliatory in its attack on the even less conciliatory forces he angered by putting a bomb in the Prophet’s turban. Much less iconic than that memorable image, it consists mostly of text and is, frankly, rather sloppy, but I find the indignation that feeds it both compelling and sobering.

Translated, it reads: “DIALOGUE?” “Or what do you think is on the drawing board?” On the inkwell it says “Freedom of speech”, while I believe the Arabic writing on the bomb reads “Muhammed” and “The Koran”.