As an Australian, the issue I have with the response of Americans to this issue is that they have completely misunderstood the Australian side of the argument.
First off, the cartoon was published in a Melbourne-based newspaper called the Herald Sun (HS). Few things to note about the HS:
- It describes itself as a “right-wing populist” newspaper and therefore pretty much anything it publishes is going to be criticised by left-wing media sources. Every single week there is an article published in other newspapers saying “You won’t BELIEVE what the HS published this week”. The Serena case is no different except it attracted international attention rather than just the usual local attention
- Furthermore, the HS is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-American businessman who also owns Fox News. Let that sink in for a minute and then think about why CNN and USA Today are criticising it so much
- Much like it’s cousin Fox News, the HS loves pissing off SJWs and publishes controversial articles intended to provoke. Case in point, their reaction to this controversy:
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s talk about the actual facts of the case.
Australians hate cheating. More so than any other country, we fixate on this idea of the ‘fair go’, and anyone who gets ahead by cheating or not accepting facts will lose the respect of Australians instantly. This applies equally to Australians sportspeople like Nick Kyrgios, who has become a hated figure in Australia for his behaviour. Serena’s behaviour at the US Open was completely unacceptable and many Australians instantly lost all respect for Serena in that moment. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good sportsperson, if you can’t follow the rules we want nothing to do with you,
Mark Knight (the cartoonist in question) has a long history of creating political cartoons for the HS and his work is held in high regard by Australians. He has created caricatures of all types of figures: white men, black men, white women, black women and everything inbetween. All equally exaggerated in a way a political cartoon is designed to be. Most importantly, there is no political bias to his work. Like most Australians, he just finds a good-humoured way to tell a story and calls out people doing to wrong thing.
The last one is probably the most important. It depicts Bronwyn Bishop, a former Australian conservative politician. The HS generally likes to paint a positive image of conservatives given that Rupert Murdoch is a Republican. But, in this case, Mark Knight called her out because she did the wrong thing and Australians hated her.
Let’s take the Serena cartoon:
I have thought about this a lot. I can’t see it as being racist or sexist in any way. It depicts a tall African-American woman. Serena Williams is a tall African-American woman. It depicts Serena as having thrown her racquet to the ground and thrown a tantrum… which she did. It depicts a dummy (or pacifier, whatever you Americans call it) on the ground giving the impression that she ‘spat the dummy’ (Australian slang for having thrown a tantrum)… which she did.
As far as political cartoons go, it’s not even especially exaggerated. This could almost be a picture of exactly what happened. A lot of Americans seem to defend Serena’s behaviour, but in Australia she’s finished. She is despised in Australia now.
To claim that this cartoon is offensive is false, plain and simple. The people overreacting to this are evidently ignoring three facts:
- The cartoon is an accurate depiction of what happened and the people involved
- Mark Knight is not a racist or sexist, or even a conservative, as his political cartoons make fun of everyone
- Left-wing media sites are predisposed to hate anything the HS publishes and will find any way possible to throw a tantrum much like Serena
I am in no way a conservative. I view myself as a centrist and a not-particularly active one at that. But the sheer lack of knowledge and logic being displayed by the critics of Mark Knight is so staggering I needed to address it.
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