the new york post: barely fit to wrap fish
I’ve never particularly liked The New York Post, but I used to read it for sports news and gossip. Those days are over. Today, they published this despicable piece of trash by Sean Delonas. This “cartoon” is the most offensive, unconscionable and disturbing thing I have ever seen printed in an allegedly legitimate newspaper. The New York Post should be ashamed.
If you are as disgusted by this as I, please join me in emailing the Editors at letters@nypost.com.
UPDATE:
The Huffington Post has chimed in here, with Sam Stein writing, in part:
“At its most benign, the cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it. Others believe 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. Perhaps that’s what Delonas wanted.”
The editor-in-chief of The New York Post – Col Allan – has responded to the uproar by issuing the following statement:
“The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”
That’s the entire statement. Three sentences, one of which is devoted to Al Sharpton.
Color me underwhelmed.
For a while there I kept repeating that I was glad to be alive to witness the implosion of the Republican Party, but now I’m unpleasantly reminded of the time I watched a bunch of hippies set off a set of expired fireworks. (In the resulting melee I suffered a bone bruise on my shin that took six months to heal.) What with Michele Bachman and her blatant and bizarre lies, Sean Hannity using Carmina Burana as a soundtrack to his fear-mongering stimulus package montage, a whole bunch of trash I’ve seen on Twitter lately and now this surreal cartoon, I’m decidedly uneasy. People are coming unhinged.
On the other hand, I got the following comment from one of my Facebook friends:
I’m a huge Obama fan– seen my profile picture?– and I may be the only one on the other side of this, but here’s the problem with playing the race card on this cartoon:
Presidents don’t write bills. Congress writes bills. Congress wrote the stimulus bill. Ergo, in this cartoon, the dead chimpanzee is Congress, not Obama. And I don’t think “congress = homicidal ape” is that controversial.
Now, if the cop was saying “they’ll have to find someone else to SIGN the next stimulus bill”, then Al Sharpton would have a point, and we could all pile on the Post for publishing such a horridly racist piece of garbage. But the cartoon as written isn’t racist. It just isn’t. And crying racism over things that aren’t just makes us liberals look like fools.
On another note, when are people going to stop thinking chimps are like adorable furry children? When a tiger turns on you it at least has the decency to just snap your neck. Chimps don’t kill you, they just rip your face off and eat your fingers.
Of course, I also think after what we’ve done to them over the past century, chimps have every right to kill as many people as they can get their hands on. Which is why you shouldn’t keep one in your house.
In conclusion: While it’s widely known that wiping your ass with the Post will only make the Post cleaner and your ass dirtier, this chimp cartoon is a non-issue. Badly drawn and not very funny, but not racist.
She makes more than a couple of interesting and important points. What she says about the (actual) chimp is amusingly phrased, but it’s serious. That animal never should have been living in someone’s house in the first place. And yes, of course, Congress writes bills. But unfortunately most people don’t know or care about such details. Even I, who knew quite well that Obama didn’t actually write the bill, was arrested viscerally not by the text, but by the image. I can’t believe for a second that the artist and the editors didn’t see it too.
(Many thanks to Roy Edroso of The Village Voice for the link love.)
Posted on February 18th, 2009 under Grenada • Tags: cartoon, chimp, delonas, media, new york post, newspapers, obama, other blogs, politics, roy edroso, shameful, WTF. • 
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February 18th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
i read some serious racial tones in this… just my opinion…
February 18th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
As far as I’m concerned there is no other possible interpretation. You get the chimp reference, right? A pet chimp (in the U.S.) almost ripped the face off a woman the other day. The police shot the animal dead. The woman is in critical condition. Sick, sick sick.
February 18th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
didn’t know about that news story but I made the monkey inference still… i thought it was about the newly installed…
February 18th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Oh, it’s most definitely about President Obama. He just signed the stimulus bill, yesterday I believe. It’s just that this is WORSE than merely depicting Obama as a chimp. He’s being depicted as a chimp who went wild, nearly killed a human and was executed by an impromptu police firing squad because he was impossible to subdue. The Republicans and their flunkies in the conservative media are going nuts about the stimulus bill, and that’s fine, but if this cartoon is not the graphical equivalent of hate speech, I don’t know what is.
February 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
In the course of my job, I read the post every day — and they’ve been going completely off the deep end lately. I just want to shake them and say, “Are you LISTENING to yourselves? You guys aren’t ‘conservatives,’ you’re RAVING LUNATICS.”
February 18th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
shameful
February 18th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Whoa. I had to look at it two or three times so make sure I was making the correct inference. The Age of Obama is flushing all the crazies out of the woodwork.
YingYang´s last blog post..“It isn’t easy being green”
February 19th, 2009 at 1:26 am
What pisses me off most is that the whole thing is such a massive waste of energy. I’m sick of distractions. We have work to do.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:46 am
It’s just plain stupid at best — malfeasance, but feels more like raw hate cowering behind plausible deniability. And just because a majority of Americans are ready to move past racism does not mean that the minority has also made progress. You’re right, Maria, the hate-prone are coming unhinged.
MattElggren´s last blog post..Beer
February 19th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more, Matt. As one of my other Twitter buddies noted, “Congress may write the laws, but no name is as linked to the stimulus as Obama’s.” Pretending otherwise is (putting it mildly) disingenuous.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
And I love the apologists for the Post saying the cartoon was “political satire” that’s been “misinterpreted.” I’ll grant them the first point, in the broad sense. But it hasn’t been misinterpreted. There is no other possible interpretation.
Of course, by saying that I mark myself as a liberal purveyor of groupthink and political correctness that plays racial politics and obviously has no sense of humor. Plus I hate freedom. And I want the terrorists to win. Obviously. Yay, terrorists.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Hilarious! Matt, knowing that you work in the “news” industry gives me hope. Srsly.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
UNADULTERATED RACISM!!
February 19th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Bienvenido, Esteban. *susurrando* ¿Por qué gritamos?
February 24th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Think The Post should have come up with an apology rather than an explanation, if they were genuinely concerned about misinterpretation. They think we stupid or what?
February 24th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Did you see Rupert’s apology today? What possessed him, if he “understands the hurt” to wait so long?
SINgleGIRL´s last blog post..Can’t Buy Me Love
February 27th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
In light of the recent watermelon postcard thing (http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Mayor-Who-Sent-Watermelon-E-mail-Says-Hell-Resign.html) I have to agree that the racist crazies are flooding out of the woodwork. I am completely amazed that people, particularly elected officials, cannot exercise the smallest amount of self-censorship or self-awareness. “I had no idea that watermelons + black people = racist”. Really??!? Without the racial overtone the bloody postcard is nonsensical you asshole mayor!
Then again, maybe it is best they have no self-awareness. This way we can spot them and weed out their poisonous kind.
YingYang´s last blog post..“It isn’t easy being green”
February 27th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I came across this great quote today, here -> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jenkins/worst-week-ever-republica_b_170378.html
“The highlight of the GOP week was, of course, Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to Barack Obama’s Congressional address. The best that can be said for Jindal’s performance is that it channeled Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, presumably not the objective, even for someone who willingly changed his name to “Bobby.” But the past seven days have offered so many moments of breathtaking inanity by the GOP that our heads spin at trying to organize them cohesively. With the country on the verge of being swallowed up in its entirety by the spiraling economy, Republicans obsessed over Obama’s citizenship, gay people, pregnant women with HIV, helicopters, primary challenges to their own Senators from porn stars and Christian fundamentalists, registration forms, hopeless recounts, and assorted variations on the 1981 theme of “Government Is The Problem.”
April 4th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
You know, I was considering writing about this too…. I agree with what you had to say, and I think you said it very well.
Mad Bull´s last blog post..Poor Likkle Priest….. Awwww.