This next issue has been blazing the internet all day and I suspect former presidents of Black America Jackson and Sharpton have an important assignment-rightfully so, this time! If you take a look at the cartoon pictured above, one can cherry pick a number of off color tangents that are grossly inappropriate for our 21st century media. If you have been residing in Osama's cave for the last few days, you may have missed the tragic story of a Connecticut woman who was mauled by a celebrity chimp, named Travis. Of course, PETA is more concerned with the now deceased simian than the clinging to life human victim. But I digress.....the cartoon attempts to make a grotesque analogy between Travis' demise and President Obama's recent signing of the nation's new stimulus bill.
Likening the country's first Black president to a monkey has been done before and it appears to never get old. And the assassination angle is equally offensive. My conservative bent does not excuse Republicans when they cross the line and I will call anyone out, irrespective of party affiliations. If the editors of the very liberal New Yorker magazine can be called to the carpet for last summer's Angela Davis/Obama the muslim mashup then the Post must also feel the wrath. Here's more on this story, courtesy of the Boston Globe:
A questionable cartoon
An uproar is brewing about an editorial cartoon in today's New York Post that appears to tie President Obama to a rampaging chimpanzee killed by police.
The cartoon, by Sean Delonas, shows a chimp splayed on the ground in a pool of blood. Two police officers stand over the body, one holding a smoking gun, and the second saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
While Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, in Congress technically wrote the $787 billion stimulus bill, Obama has championed it, gone back out on the stump to sell it, and claimed it as his own while signing it in Denver on Tuesday.
The cartoon appears to refer to Travis, the pet chimpanzee and TV star who was shot to death by police in Stamford, Conn. on Monday after it mauled a friend of its owner.
The Rev. Al Sharpton told the Associated Press that the cartoon is "troubling at best."
Sharpton notes that Obama is the nation's first black president and that African Americans have been depicted as monkeys by racists through history.
"Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?" he asked, according to press accounts.
Sam Stein wrote on the Obama-friendly Huffington Post website that it seems "rife with racial and political sensitivities."
"At its most benign, the cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it," Stein opined. "Most provocatively, it compares the president to a rabid chimp. Either way, the incorporation of violence and (on a darker level) race into politics is bound to be controversial."
The Post is standing by the cartoon, and questioning Sharpton's motives.
"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut," editor-in-chief Col Allan said in a statement. "It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."
UPDATE: Delonas told CNN this afternoon that the controversy was "absolutely friggin' ridiculous."
"Do you really think I'm saying Obama should be shot? I didn't see that in the cartoon," Delonas said. "It's about the economic stimulus bill. If you're going to make that about anybody, it would be [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, which it's not."
The YWCA weighed in with its concerns.
"I think this cartoon is inflammatory, inappropriate and irresponsible," Lorraine Cole, YWCA's CEO, said in a statement. "It recalls deeply offensive negative stereotypes of African Americans characterized as monkeys and is seemingly directed at our first black president who championed the economic recovery stimulus bill. It also brings to mind racially charged police brutality incidents involving Black men who were recklessly shot by New York City police officers."
Stay tuned for Rupert Murdoch's contact details. In this blog's early inception, we provided contact information when high level Black media outlets and radio stations routinely disrespected African-American imagery and now it's the Post's turn.
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