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Hervé St-Louis on a Writer Seeing a Serge Chapleau Cartoon in La Presse as Anti-Semitic
posted June 27, 2007
 

Here's another side of the story that your comments really did not take into consideration. Mr Wajsman did not mention that the character in the cartoon is the non Jewish leader of the Quebec official opposition, Mr Mario Dumont. In the caricature of Mr Dumont does not have a crooked nose as Mr Wajsman claims and the bug eyes are an exaggeration on Dumont's real features.

Some English Canadians have a history of trying to demonize everything that comes from Quebec and trying to prove that the people of that province are anti-semitic, racists and a whole lot of other bad things. Mr Wajsman's article is only part of that old routine. Chapleau has drawn far worse over the years. For over a decade, he has drawn the current leader of the federal opposition party, as a rat. The Governor General has exaggerated black features. The Bloc Leader is still depicted as a moron with a cheese hat. Former PQ leader, Andre Boisclair is always depicted as a stereotypical gay man. Chapleau depicts himself as a bigoted loud mouth coach potato called Gerard D Laflaque. Most people "rendered" by Chapleau, have been "grossly" exaggerated over the years. Mr Wajsman has not denounced that.

What Chapleau did was quite in line with himself and his brand of humour. He spares NO ONE. And considering he is mocking the ultra nationalist Francophone leader who denounced the Jewish community last winter and built his election on voters' apprehension of that community, the irony is just too powerful. Of note, Mr Dumont, has repeatedly refused to attend meetings organized by other ethnic communities in Quebec but skipped a budget crisis to meet with a few leaders of the Jewish community.

Chapleau is a village idiot and what he did is quite in line with the Danish cartoonists' Mohamed drawings. To see this caricature as an attack on Quebec's Jewish community is to not understand the context and why this this cartoon was created. Mr Dumont is a populist who changes costume frequently as it suits his goals and this is what the cartoon depicted.