A request to Britain's cartoonists

Well, Lynton's latest dead cat certainly got the attention today. Who would have thought that  one obsolete word which had it's previous fifteen minutes of fame in an election on the other side of the Atlantic more than a hundred and thirty years ago, could attract such a lot of attention.

Just one small request to Britain's cartoonists. Please could you spare us the sight of any more parodies of  Gerome's 'Phryne revealed before the Areopagus' which originally looked like this:



but was parodied like this


in reference to the previous group of people who were referred to as Mugwumps and James G Blaine, the presidential candidate of their own party who they declined to support.

I don't know whether the thought of Boris Johnson as Hypereides or of Jeremy Corbyn as Blaine/Phryne is more off-putting.

The US Presidential election in 1884 between Blaine and Grover Cleveland was one of the most heatedly contested in history, making not just our present General Election but even Hillary vs. Trump seem tame by comparison.

The campaign slogans of the two sides included, from the Democrats and Mugwumps,

"Blaine, Blaine, James G Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine"

and from the Republicans,

"Ma, Ma, Where's my Pa, Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha."

They don't make election campaigns like that any more - thank goodness!

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