I can’t believe the amount of clowns who’ve tried arguing with me over the last 24hours that the cartoons by Al Nisbet aren’t racist. Here’s a test – If you don’t think it’s racist, you are part of the problem.

End of story.

To desperately defend these cartoons as not racist by trawling through every feature of the cartoons is beneath contempt. The characteristics Nisbet has used with the shading, with the lips, with the backwards baseball cap, all are dog whistles for NZs redneck masses and listening to their squeals of ‘it’s not racist’ remind all intelligent residents that our best and brightest fled these anti-intellectual shores many moons ago.

So if these two cartoons aren’t racist…

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…then what about this one from Al dated from 2001…

…not only are these cartoons racist, they are hateful towards the weakest members of society. Satire pokes fun at those with power, it doesn’t attack the most vulnerable. Politicians should always be offended, Police should always be offended and the rich should always be offended, but the weak and most vulnerable? Attacking them is nothing better than bullying.

Why must the weak and poor suffer further from a global economic crisis they had no hand in making? How many of the 270 000 children in poverty were on the phone to their Wall st stockbroker in 2007 buying lite crude in Euros and speculating on the Goldman Sachs derivatives market?

None. Yet they are open to be vilified and mocked for daring to ask for more in the form of a couple of shitty weet-bix and milk.

We can’t afford $100m per year to feed the poorest children, but we do have $400m to give away each year in tax cuts to the wealthiest.

Susan Devoy says the cartoons aren’t racist – which shows what an appalling choice in Race Relations Commissioner she actually is – how shameful. She is like a firefighter who doesn’t bother putting out any actual fires. She’s had numerous issues under her short time as Race Relations Commissioner where her narrow views on race have actually defeated the point of having a Race Relations Commissioner in the first place.

Which is of course the reason Devoy was appointed.

Here she is grinning like an idiot…

The Press Council have been even more racist than the cartoons. They have argued that a cartoonist has the right to offend and they are standing by the cartoonist. Funny thing though is that in 2003, Malcolm Evans offended Israel with this cartoon…

..and the Press Council supported the NZ Herald’s decision to sack him AND they defended the Herald’s right not to print letters criticizing the Herald’s decision.

So if a cartoon offends Maori or Pacific Islander, then it’s freedom of speech. If the cartoon offends Israel it’s a sacking and suppression of criticism of that sacking.

Un-fucking-believable.

The list of idiotic crap I’ve heard from people over the last 24 hours trying to defend these cartoons are an example of how our poorly funded public broadcasting services have failed NZers.

“It’s not racist if it’s true” really means “I’m racist and need some bullshit mass accepted stereotype to back up my bigotry”.

Screaming at poor people that they must feed their kids when the Ministry is actively finding ways to disqualify anyone from the benefit is the sort of satire reserved for The Civilian, but to watch this mockery of the poorest in society so cheerfully embraced by the rest of NZ reminds us all that ignorance and fear always stalk these shaky isles.

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well housed, well warmed and well fed.”

Herman Melville