Michael Leunig Quotes
Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis.
Leunig, Michael. The Lot: In Words. Penguin Books, 2008.
The irony was that Breen was in charge of the Motion Picture censorship at a time when he personally could block any motion picture from being exhibited by withholding the Hollywood Production Seal of Approval. He was not only a virulent anti-Semitic but prohibited things like scenes with a double bed rather than twin beds for married couples.
First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, 1874-1944, invited Jessie DePriest the Black wife of a Congressman to tea at the White House. No Black woman had ever been there socially before. This was a typical Southern reaction. The Texas State legislature actually passed a resolution chastising the First Lady—the only such action in American history.
As long as the bigotry took for form of speech, writing, and voting he was a defender even of anti-Semites. However, when that leads to violence or an infringement on other people’s rights, then the bigotry becomes criminal.
Michael Leunig, typically referred to as Leunig (his signature on his cartoons), is an Australian cartoonist, poet, artist, philosopher and cultural commentator. His best known works include The Curly Pyjama Letters, cartoon books The Essential Leunig, The Wayward Leunig, The Stick, Goatperson, Short Notes from the Long History of Happiness and Curly Verse, among others and The Lot, a compilation of his 'Curly World' newspaper columns. Leunig has also written a book of prayers, When I Talk To You. He was declared an Australian Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia in 1999.
