Nothing says we live in a Clown World quite like the fact that an exhibition called “Licence to Offend” is cancelled… because it might offend someone. No, I’m not making that up.
Should we really be surprised, though? After all, we live in a time where a ‘Festival of Dangerous Ideas’ features a roster of the most comfortable left-wing nostrums that would raise an approving simper at any Grey Lynn dinner party. Where an ‘International Comedy Festival’ is about as funny as a rectal exam.
The showing featured work from celebrated newspaper cartoonists including the Spectator’s JG Fox, Morten Morland, also formerly of the Spectator, the Mail’s Mac and Pugh, and the Guardian’s Martin Rowson. The event, organised by photographer Paul Mowatt and artist Zoe Dorelli, was to display dozens of cartoons ranging across the political spectrum to the public after its private viewing on Wednesday evening in Kingston. Yet their hopes were dashed after the venue contacted the duo and ordered them to ‘take down the show immediately after our private view,’ according to Dorelli. Since then, the private viewing has been cancelled too – just hours before it was to take place this evening.
According to Dorelli, “I was told they found the work too offensive! Apparently they have to deal with councils across the country and can’t risk anyone getting offended, or of appearing too political.”
Yes, a showcase of ‘offensive art’ would offend people. It’s almost as if that’s what it says on the box.
And, golly: political cartoons being political? Well, I never.
Mac said: “It’s crazy. Everyone is so incensed. In bygone days satire used to be absolutely savage, but suddenly we can’t express any opinions.
“The powers that be, with this gallery, said they were involved with different councils and didn’t want to offend anybody. It is weird because the vast majority of the works have already been scrutinised and passed by editors and published in national newspapers.”
But this is modern Britain, where people are arrested for thought crimes – ‘silently praying’, and hundreds of people are banged up every week for posting perfectly legal opinions (aka, ‘non-crime hate incidents’) on social media.
Among Jonathan Pugh’s works is a cartoon of a prisoner telling a bird about making ‘some regrettable tweets’.
It was inspired by police visiting the home of Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson earlier this year over a deleted social media post.
As Mark Steyn said, ‘Je Suis Charlie’ was a disgraceful lie peddled by craven cowards. None of the fatuous prats virtue-signalling that they were ‘Charlie’ really were ‘Charlie’. Only Charlie Hebdo was Charlie. Which was why they were murdered by intolerant psychopaths. If even one-tenth of the gutless creeps puffing their little chests and changing the little social media profiles really had been Charlie, then the ‘offended’ Muslims (a tautology, I apologise) would never have had enough bullets for them all.
This is how freedom dies: one ‘offence’-taking at a time.
