Too handsome to lampoon

Two hours and thirty five minutes into Obama's presidency, and already he's off limits to least one European cartoonist:

Obama too handsome for good satire -caricaturist

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 11:35:00 AM (GMT-08:00) BRUSSELS, Jan 20 (Reuters) -

U.S. President Barack Obama is too good looking to provide inspiration for cartoons in the same way George W. Bush served as fodder for some of their most biting commentary, a caricaturist on said Tuesday.

"It's never a gift for a caricaturist to draw a handsome man," said Pierre Kroll, from Belgium, which prides itself on its comic book culture including Tintin.

"Somehow, we prefer overweight people, people with a beard, huge noses, ridiculous glasses ... If caricaturists could elect presidents, we would choose people with faces we enjoy drawing, and not a playboy like him," said Kroll whose works appears in the Belgian daily "Le Soir".

Kroll said positive public sentiment towards the incoming U.S president might also make it harder for caricaturists whose portraits have to underline a person's weaknesses and flaws.

"Caricaturists like to be a bit nasty and here, he comes with a lot of sympathy, it's harder for us to do our job and mock him while Bush had become a favourite target for cartoonists," he said.

(Reporting by Bate Felix and Marine Hass)

I feel sorry for poor Pierre Kroll. He is so blinded by Bush-hatred that he fails to see that Obama's ears are almost as big as Dumbo the Elephant's. If those suckers aren't perfect caricature-fodder I don't know what is. Then he goes on to describe what really makes a good caricature, "overweight people, people with a beard, huge noses, ridiculous glasses" without stopping to consider that Bush possessed none of those features, yet they had a field day with him. I hope he has another skill to fall back on, because caricatures of the former President Bush are going to start to look a little out dated pretty quickly. Maybe he makes a really bitchen' Belgian waffle!