A controversial cartoon was published in the New York Post Wednesday, and many are interpreting it as racist and inflammatory. In extreme cases, some are calling it an illustrated death threat against President Brarack Obama.
The cartoon depicts two white police officers; one has a gun drawn and its barrel smoking. Both are standing over the bullet-riddled body of a chimpanzee and the one without the gun says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”
Although the Post issued an apology, there are those who are still calling for their pound of flesh from the paper.
I'm not so sure the Post should be pilloried for this cartoon. Yes, the racial stereotyping of African Americans as monkeys has a long, documented and disgusting history, but the argument that the chimpanzee in this cartoon represents President Obama is a stretch for a number of reasons.
As an aside, I'd like to mention that President George W. Bush was often likened to a monkey and nobody seemed to care. Maybe that's because Bush was reviled by the liberal media and anyone caught defending him was dismissed as a boob. Even our own political humor site here at About.com joined in on the fun. For all of his faults (and there were many), Bush had pretty thick skin. So did his supporters. When the accusations were substantive, he (and they) would push back, but on things like this, they were just ignored.
And that brings me to the "death threat" argument. Just scanning the Internet, I can cite many more examples of people advocating the death of President Bush than I can President Obama and in far more literal terms. I sincerely doubt the Secret Service is looking into the Post's editors as credible threats against the president. In fact, the calls for boycotts of the paper and the demonstrations surrounding this cartoon are drawing more attention to it than if it had simply been ignored. If there are any direct (God forbid) threats against the president based on some radical racist wacko's interpretation of this cartoon, you can thank the demonstrators, not the cartoonist.
If there were a direct racial epithet here, I would agree with the demonstrators that it was over-the-top. For example, if the chimp in the cartoon had "Obama" emblazoned across his belly, then I would join in on the outrage and my voice would be mingled with the chorus of people calling it racist.
Let's not forget, Obama wasn't the only one who crafted that ridiculous legislation, and therefore I'm afraid I can't just assume the cartoonist was referencing Obama. The stimulus package wasn't even his idea. The Demos were talking about a stimulus plan long before Obama embraced it. So, if liberals really want to get up in arms about this cartoon, [b][insert Democrat's name here][/b] should also be livid over it because it implicates [b]him/her[/b] as much as it does Obama.
I think the trouble conservatives have with this kind of issue is that it reflects society's urgency to create a politically correct utopia, where free speech really
isn't free. Joseph Stalin had a similar ideology, only his political correctness didn't fall along racial lines, it fell along political ones.
As I see it, this was a statement about the stimulus that used a recent news event to illustrate its point -- that the stimulus bill was so ridiculous it might as well have been written by a chimpanzee. People who want to make connections where there are none are free to do it, but that doesn't mean that those connections are the real motivation behind the cartoon. Context here is everything. Its a shame so few people are willing to admit that.
Comments
With respect, I think we all need to better understand the baggage that some words and images carry. Consider this interview with two young black women who were called monkeys by a white deacon who turned them away from church services in 1964.
Doesn’t white America we owe some sort of respect to those who suffered and sacrificed to make this country a more equal society?
Just because we have free speech does not mean that frivolously causing offense to others is acceptable behavior. One should expect the editors of a major newspaper to have a better grasp of history than that shown by the Post. It is one thing to make an unfortunate word choice out of innocence, another to make it out of ignorance.
Why bother to defend an ugly piece of ignorance? Avoiding giving needless offense is human decency, not same as Stalinism.
How many blacks have been gunned down?
I see the cartoon as a cheap shot at ridiculing and laughing at Shaun Bell and many like him.
Satire is often not intended to be funny. Readers and others are sorely mistaken to assume satire, whether written, spoken or drawn, is to always be funny.
Satire targets human nature and our human nature is often not funny, not at all. Seems these days we humans spend most of our time stealing, swindling, raping, murdering and engaging in warfare.
When we are not busy effecting a Ponzi scheme, we are busy killing each other. Rarely, today, do we examine these issues of personal and societal responsibilities, which are rarely of a funny nature.
What I see going on is a bandwagon loaded up with victims, and a bandwagon loaded up with perpetrators, both engaging in an inane race to convince bystanders who is the better.
I am not a bystander. I am not about to waste time from my life cheering or booing these stringless yo-yos racing along to cross a finish line of stupidity. I am not interested in listening to alleged victims whine and cry nor interested in listening to alleged perpetrators huff and puff.
This chimpanzee cartoon does not target any one person nor racial group. This cartoon targets a broad spectrum of problems created by our human nature.
Keeping a 200 pound wild animal as a pet is absolute idiocy. Helping to contain a 200 pound wild animal is absolute idiocy. This stimulus package coming out of Capitol Hill is absolute idiocy. George Bush is an idiot. Barrack Obama is an idiot. Our California Governor Muscle Head is an idiot. Almost all of us are idiots.
Those pontificating this cartoon is racist in nature, are idiots. Those screaming this cartoon is not racist in nature, are idiots.
Satire in based in effecting subtle unique reactions from each person. None of us “see” quite the same satiric message. We see what our mind’s eye directs us to see.
Why the heck do you people demand I think like you, regardless of your point of view? Who are you to dictate what I may think or may not think?
Each of us is responsible to deal with satire in an intelligent and mature fashion, and we are responsible to be tolerant of diversity in opinion, in satire.
Whining and crying self-made victims rasp my nerves. Those claiming authority on what is and what is not, really annoy me.
I say to all who are up in arms over this cartoon, either against or for this cartoon, I say, “Sit down and shut up.”
I do not much cotton to idiots and this does seem everywhere I look, there stands an idiot, ranting about this and that. Sit down and shut up, already.
Satire is not always intended to be funny nor are my comments intended to be funny.
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
The only ones I read calling our Prez a monkey
are african americans, I still don’t see the resemblance or association.
Please esplain.
I think the Washington Post should stick with their guns. It is refreshing to see a media that doesn’t march in goosestep behind Obama and the Democrat socialism machine. Of course their point was pointing out that the so-called Stimulus Bill might have well been written by a monkey. Slow-learners will soon figure that out. Also, can you imagine the screaming and gnashing of teeth if people said the same things about Obama that they said about Bush?
In Sharpton’s case, when the only tool you have in your box is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Obama had nothing to do with ‘writing’ the bill, he merely signed it. Are we going to have to tip-toe through the tulips with everything having to do with Obama? The following day after this ‘incident’, I saw a cartoon in a national paper with Obama shooting money bags out of a cannon at King Kong. Sharpton is the only one seeing monkeys in clouds, ink blots and tea leaves.
I don’t care what race he or she or they is/are, but whoever wrote that “stimulus” pork barrel package IS a monkey.