In the "Post Racial" era, aren't we over-reacting just a tad? I'm pretty sure the joke is that "The Stimulus is no poor, a monkey could have written it!" My take on Al Sharpton and other Black leaders screaming "outrage" is that they are the ones bringing race into the mix.
Last I checked, President Obama did not write the "Stimulus" Bill -- Nancy Pelosi and her liberal "Primates" on Capitol Hill did.
From The NY Post's Sean Delonas
The Associated Press reports:
NEW YORK – A New York Post cartoon that some have interpreted as comparing President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police drew outrage Wednesday from civil rights leaders and elected officials who said it echoed racist stereotypes of blacks as monkeys.
Some critics called the cartoon racist and said it trivialized a tragedy in which a woman was disfigured and a chimpanzee killed. Others said the cartoon suggests that Obama should be assassinated. Many urged a boycott of the Post and the companies that advertise in it.
"How could the Post let this cartoon pass as satire?" said Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. "To compare the nation's first African-American commander in chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel."
State Sen. Eric Adams called it a "throwback to the days" when black men were lynched.
The Rev. Al Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with
monkeys."Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the Post, defended the work.
"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut," 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."
The cartoon drew hundreds of comments on the Internet including at the liberal Huffington Post, where columnist Sam Stein wrote: "At its most benign, the cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it. Most provocatively, it compares the president to a rabid chimp."
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By comparison, I don't remember any outrage over the following:
And of course this wonderful display of political humor:
Right Pundits explains it this way.
The next question is should the left by so vehemently outraged by the identification of our president as a chimpanzee. One suspects there are short memories at work here and tiresome partisan shouting. A frequent pastime of our liberal friends was to call Bush “chimp.” What is the difference? Is the New York Post cartoon racist?
They will say that the difference is that Barack Obama is half-black, and that the ancient depiction of a black man as a monkey is a stereotype that cannot be tolerated. Predictably, Al Sharpton has already weighed in on the cartoon controversy:
“The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.”
As a person of color I say get over the stereotype. Come to think of it that may also be Sean Delonas point in the New York Post cartoon. When a black man can finally be elected president of the United States, anything goes now. The race-baiting of Al Sharpton becomes irrelevant while the rest of us move on. We have entered the era of post-racial politics thanks to Obama’s election. If the last president can be a chimp, so can Obama. And that is wonderful progress for our country. Ook ook.
Post-racial. Are White people really the ones to blame anymore for racism? Or are people like Sharpton and Eric Holder seeking it out?
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