The Power Of the Cliche.(Jean Plantu)(Brief Article)(Interview)

France's leading political cartoonist, Jean Plantu, 51, skewers politicians and potentates every day on the front page of Le Monde and every week in L'Express. He has sketched some 15,000 political cartoons in his 30-year career. Now, with the country in the midst of legislative elections, Plantu's pen is once again drawing blood.

What's he thinking when he limns those puffed-up pols? Those belligerent Uncle Sams? In an interview with NEWSWEEK's Ginny Power, he gives us some sharp-edged reflections on politics, policy--and on the media. Excerpts:

POWER: Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's victory over Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of France's recent presidential elections was a surprise to many. How do you think Le Pen's National Front will affect the upcoming legislative elections?

PLANTU: Among the nearly 20 percent of voters who voted for Le Pen, many are from the provinces, and feel distanced from Paris. They're sick of the ruling elite and are saying no. It's a show of protest and of desperation. For someone who is unemployed or homeless, the RPR [President Jacques Chirac's political party] and the Socialists are the same thing. I think Le Pen has a grain of fascism in him, but I don't think his electors do. When I draw him, he's wearing a khaki shirt and an armband. But I try not to be too cliched because I don't want the voters to think that once again the media and the Paris elite are just portraying him as a cliche. The press, the media and the political classes have not understood that that's how we are perceived.

But isn't that what you're doing?

Yes, but that's my job. You can say that I hit below the belt, but I'm a caricaturist. You know, my role is becoming much too important. People are reading less and accept a caricature as the final definition of a personality. People see a drawing and no longer feel the need to read the paper. We live in a dictatorship of artistic directors, television images and photos, in a dictatorship of cliches and images. After April 21, the press went out and reported from a little Alsatian village, with no immigrants, that had voted for Le Pen. The journalists were trying to show the stupidity of far-right voters. But it was illusory. Eighty percent of France's journalists are on the left. They did the easy thing instead of going to a crime-ridden suburb and finding National Front voters there. France is moving toward the right. The media ...