Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Suddenly, you are famous, Mr Heng!

Silencing its critics who were forced to eat humble dosa, India recently announced that it had successfully put its "budget-class" space probe into a Mars orbit. It made the news worldwide (and on Mars too, I am sure, if there are Martians).

This cartoon below forced the New York TImes to eat humble dosa and to issue an apology to India:


http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/10/06/3576519/apology-cartoon-india/

I think it also made the cartoonist famous, at least to Singaporeans...

“We apologize to readers who were offended by the choice of images in this cartoon,” Andrew Rosenthal, the Times’ Editorial Page Editor wrote. He added that the cartoon “was in no way trying to impugn India.”
“The intent of the cartoonist, Heng Kim Song, was to highlight how space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of rich, Western countries. Mr. Heng, who is based in Singapore, uses images and text — often in a provocative way — to make observations about international affairs,” Rosenthal wrote.
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Hmm, so who is Heng Kim Song? The New Paper's resident humorist SM Ong dug up some tidbits, including the info that PM Lee had praised an earlier cartoon by Mr Heng:

http://smong.net/2014/10/cartoonist-heng-kim-song-not-so-heng.html

One of Mr Heng's cartoons is featured in this series in Time.com:

http://content.time.com/time/cartoonsoftheweek/0,29489,2033323_2213603,00.html

I must say Singapore has a very talented political cartoonist in Mr Heng. But how come his works are all about non-Singaporean events? Or am I being the village idiot here?

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