The late Adam Malik, long Indonesia's foreign minister and later vice-president, was called the "kancil" after the mousedeer which, in his country's folktales, uses cunning and humour against bigger predators. In one story Mr Malik's admirers used to tell – not one found in illustrated children's books – the mousedeer evades a tiger by running into a hollow log. The tiger gets its head trapped, whereupon the kancil exits the other end of the log and mounts the tiger from behind. Indonesians enjoy a ribald animal yarn as much as anyone.

But what to make of the recent dog-mounts-dog cartoons published in two newspapers? First, the Indonesian popular tabloid Rakyat Merdeka shows John Howard and Alexander Downer as humping dingoes, somehow related to an alleged Australian wish to take over Papua. Then The Weekend Australian, a newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, responds with a cartoon showing the Indonesian President, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, in formal black headcap, as a dog mounting a four-legged Papuan with a bone in his nose. "No offence intended" was the caption.

Actually, the cartoon could hardly be calculated to offend more. The Rakyat Merdeka drawing was not particularly funny or on-target, aside from being tasteless, so was easy for its targets to shrug off. The Murdoch newspaper's cartoon is consciously more offensive, since the dog is regarded as a particularly unclean animal by Indonesia's Muslims. It is hard to think of any other world leader being depicted the same way as the cartoon did Mr Yudhoyono.

Indeed, by sharp contrast, the same newspaper had just set what may be record levels of sycophancy in its coverage of visits by Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair and Wen Jiabao. When another of its cartoonists depicted the former president Soeharto as an orang-utang swinging nonchalantly through the jungles, during the 1997 forest-fire haze and economic crisis, its editors were soon on a plane to grovel in Jakarta. See-sawing between adulation and reckless offence hardly reflects well on editorial judgement. Sentiment in the Muslim world is inflamed enough. It's a time to do what you do with rutting dogs: bring out the hose.

Meanwhile, the failings of Indonesia's rule in Papua are apparent enough. They go back many years before Mr Yudhoyono became President, and he seems willing to break with the past as he did in Aceh. Though not happy about the cartoon, he seems willing to let it pass and is damping down any movement among his officials to react on his behalf.

As Adam Malik used to say: the dogs may bark, the caravan moves on.