Don’t mess with satirists if you are in politics

We haven't heard this much talk about the presidential anatomy since the other guy in the Jeffrey Epstein files was in the Oval.

- Maureen Dowd

President Donald Trump, a master at minimising others, is now being literally minimised on South Park by the crass and fearless creators of the cartoon.

I could have told Mr Trump that it’s best not to provoke brilliant satirists. I learned that lesson the hard way 20 years ago.

When I wrote Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk, about the tangled father and son saga that led to the invasion of Iraq, I wanted Pat Oliphant, a lacerating political cartoonist, to do the book's cover.

I wheedled until that acerbic Aussie finally agreed. When the drawing came back, it was dazzling: a tiny, jangly-eyed George W Bush under a big cowboy hat, his hands braced at the guns on his holster. He was walking down the driveway of an overgrown haunted version of the White House with a gargoyle hanging from the trees.

Oliphant had given the president the body of a bug. Even though the book was harshly critical of W and his scheming advisers, I was worried that the sketch might be a bit too disrespectful to the president.

The cartoonist was a firm believer in “stirring up the beast”, as he called it, taking a torch to the lies and hypocrisy of the powerful. So, naturally, he was contemptuous when I suggested that we make W less buglike. But, faced with more wheedling, he reluctantly agreed to take another crack at it.

I waited nervously. When the new illustration came in, W no longer looked like a bug. Pat had made the president look more like a monkey. And he was even smaller.

It was a valuable lesson. Don’t mess with satirists. They'll always have the last say, and it will be blistering.