ATHENS, Greece – The ancient philosophers had their golden age. Now it’s the turn of Greek newspaper cartoonists. The economic crisis that threatens to go global offers a bonanza for satirists with a talent for the scathing image or caption.
Cartoonists have portrayed the Greek economy as the Titanic, that eternal symbol of disaster; Greek leaders as buffoons shielded from mobs by robotic police with gas masks and truncheons; and ordinary Greeks as beggars, at the mercy of fat cats in top hats who represent international creditors.
“Bad times are good times for cartoonists,” said Maria Tzaboura, a cartoonist for the Greek newspaper Proto Thema who sees humor as a form of protest and “less is more” as a guide for her simply drawn victims of circumstance, their limbs scattered about like a dismembered children’s doll.
Greece’s economic upheaval affects almost everyone, consuming commentators, cartoonists among them, who channel a nation’s confusion and anger over slashed wages and benefits, higher taxes, goalpost-shifting politicians and the austere dictates of foreign creditors worried about their own portfolios.
Greek cartoonists eviscerate every conceivable culprit with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel or, better said, an assassin’s dagger. Sometimes, they unleash happy-go-lucky blasts of sarcasm that yank a
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