Report from the ducks pond

For readers less familiar with Sweden’s domestic politics, here’s a short recapitulation: This year is election year. The right wing block has harboured high hopes for finally taking the governing power from the Social Democrats for several years now. Only a few months ago it looked like they had the election victory in the bag, but the Social Democrats – together with the supporting Left Party and Green Party – have gained momentum, and now the two opposing alternatives are almost even in the polls. With seven months left until election day, and taking into consideration the Social Democrats’ historical record of being notoriously good across the finish line, the frustration in the right wing coalition is strong.

It would not be hard to picture the staff at the Conservative Party headquarters breaking piñatas and forming conga lines when the story broke that a high ranking staff member at the Social Democratic headquarters confessed to having run his own anonymous e-mail campaign, slandering the right wing Prime Minister candidate Fredrik Reinfeldt. This scandal came at just the right time to possibly turn tables once again.

At that point the issue would hardly be of any concern to this blog. Even though I’m professionally involved in party politics I try to draw some sort of line between this blog and my day time job.

But in a bizarre turn of events the right wing forces are now using any means necessary to prove that the e-mail campaign was not in fact the work of a single staff member (he quit his job the same day the story broke, by the way…) but a part of a destructive culture within the Social Democrats. They are now making a huge fuss about this cartoon (middle pic to the right!) being circulated. It depicts the mentioned Reinfeldt as a werewolf behind a mask, and is drawn by renowned news paper illustrator Kjell Nilsson Mäki.

The illustrator has produced hundreds of satire cartoons in most of the leading news papers in Sweden. Among them is also this one, depicting Prime Minister Göran Persson floating on top of the victims of the Tsunami disaster in East Asia.

Concerned Secretary General of the Conservative Party, Sven Otto Litorin, commented on the need for political satire as "a way to let out steam" (svenska: "en ventil"), but thinks that it’s inappropriate to use this kind of picture for proper political party, though it might be ok for a youth league.

A way to let out steam? That’s reducing the role of satire to that of a jester of the court.

Political satire is an age old form of art that goes far beyond the need to “let out steam” It can be an important tool for debate and discussion, a call to arms against an oppressor, or an artistic expression in it’s own right.

Good satire was never supposed to be tasteful, or nice. And the only problem with Nilsson Mäki’s drawing is that it’s not nearly vicious enough to be more than a mediocre example of that cathegory.

Another point of good satire is that it has something to say. Something beyond being mean. A jester amuses the king by ridiculing him. An artist working with satire amuses the people and enrages the king. Satire is, at the core, a very serious thing.

Note: The featured picture was borrowed from the wonderful site Satan Ate My lunch – where art goes when it dies. I’ll tell you more about them at another time.