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revolution_frhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/cartoon/2009/may/25/david-cameron-mps-expenses-conservatives-election
This is not the place for a rant on British politics, the once-leftwing Guardian's mutual masturbation fest with the Tory leader, or the way the 'expenses row' is a plot cooked up by the Barclay Brothers and their anti-EU Conservative friends (not least because any mention of the Barclay brothers - reclusive small-scale Rupert Murdochs - gets blogs closed down in this free country of ours). However, one result of this highly-spun 'scandal' and the genuine but confused public anger it has created is that not a day has passed in the last three weeks without some political commentator or TV presenter using the word 'guillotine', '1789', 'revolution' etc etc. and, begorrah, yes, even Marat and Robespierre (the only revolutionaries anyone here has ever heard of) get the odd namecheck. I don't read newspapers anymore (they're full of crap), so I dunno what the other cartoonists have being doing, but Martin Rowson - generally, one of the good guys - regularly 'quotes' 18thc cartoons, (usually Hogarth) and today did this one.
Incidentally, the oft-quoted legend about the 1794 (?) original http://www.angelfire.com/ca6/frenchrevolution89/robespierre3.JPG is that the cartoonist was guillotined for daring to criticise Robespierre. Like so much else, this appears to be bollocks - the cartoon is probably post-Thermidor, and curator Claudette Hould says there's no record of anyone being killed for it (though if anyone knows any more about it, please post!).
This is not the place for a rant on British politics, the once-leftwing Guardian's mutual masturbation fest with the Tory leader, or the way the 'expenses row' is a plot cooked up by the Barclay Brothers and their anti-EU Conservative friends (not least because any mention of the Barclay brothers - reclusive small-scale Rupert Murdochs - gets blogs closed down in this free country of ours). However, one result of this highly-spun 'scandal' and the genuine but confused public anger it has created is that not a day has passed in the last three weeks without some political commentator or TV presenter using the word 'guillotine', '1789', 'revolution' etc etc. and, begorrah, yes, even Marat and Robespierre (the only revolutionaries anyone here has ever heard of) get the odd namecheck. I don't read newspapers anymore (they're full of crap), so I dunno what the other cartoonists have being doing, but Martin Rowson - generally, one of the good guys - regularly 'quotes' 18thc cartoons, (usually Hogarth) and today did this one.
Incidentally, the oft-quoted legend about the 1794 (?) original http://www.angelfire.com/ca6/frenchrevolution89/robespierre3.JPG is that the cartoonist was guillotined for daring to criticise Robespierre. Like so much else, this appears to be bollocks - the cartoon is probably post-Thermidor, and curator Claudette Hould says there's no record of anyone being killed for it (though if anyone knows any more about it, please post!).
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