Political looney 'toons

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Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover of New Yorker Magazine

Cartoonist Steve Bell from the Guardian repeatedly portrayed George W. Bush as an ape

Cartoonist Sean Delonas

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Martin Ronson's depiction of former Prime Minister Tony Blair

On 21 July last year, Barack and Michelle Obama were depicted on the cover of the New Yorker magazine as Muslim terrorists re-enacting their famous 'fist bump', which they had shared at a previous political rally. Michelle sports a Kalashnikov and Barack a head-dress, while the American flag burns in the fireplace.

Throughout his reign, former US president George W Bush was repeatedly drawn as an ape in the Guardian newspaper by cartoonist Steve Bell. There were endless artistic insults to the former American president – one memorable one featured Bush dragging his knuckles on the ground and marrying a dog holding a bouquet of missiles.

In February this year, The
New York Post published a cartoon of police officers shooting a chimpanzee dead with the caption: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." Cartoonist Sean Delonas
was behind it. The message? President Obama is the
soon-to-be-assassinated monkey.

Since he became British Prime Minister two years ago, Gordon Brown has been regularly caricatured – to the point where he has complained personally to cartoonists that they make him look too fat, or too devilish.

Martin Rowson's highly unflattering 2008 depiction of former UK prime minister Tony Blair's visit to the Middle East showed the former PM as an haggard aging rocker, half naked in a purple catsuit on stage wearing a very visible codpiece and screaming, "Goodnight Baghdad", alongside the caption: "Farewell tour".

THIS is one of Conor Casby's political 'portraits', an undated painting of the taoiseach of the time, Bertie Ahern, which he put on display in September 2003 at Merrion Square, Dublin.

The picture, painted on a black background, features what appears to be a pregnant Ahern, replete with breasts and clearly showing his genitalia.

The arms of Ahern, who is smiling cheekily in the portrait, are also deformed, ending in stumps.

March 29, 2009