Gee, Pam, you’re interfering with the precious right to compare prominent members of minority groups to animals. What do you have against sophisticated political discourse, anyway?

This is three miles west of not funny.  If this doesn’t cost somebody their ass I will be doubly disgusted.  Of course there is the old saying; “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

If this doesn’t cost somebody their ass I will be doubly disgusted.

Are you kidding?  We’re talking about the New York Post.  This is grounds for promotion.

Somehow, this has managed to upset me on an entirely deeper level than any of the shit we saw during the campaign—even the stuffed monkey man from my hometown wasn’t this bad.

There was another political cartoon a week ago comparing Obama to a scary black street thug holding up the good white folk by declaring he was going to bust a cap in their salary.

Seriously.

Perhaps we just need another cartoon.  Maybe one of the editors of the NYP at the head of a line against a wall, with a firing squad readying itself, and a bright shiny new flag flying above.

Bonus points if we could figure out some way to have them having sex with their female parents at the same time.

Wait, so now it’s perfectly OK for the Post to advocate the assassination of the President? 

This would have got somebody sent to Guantanamo if it were published circa 2003-2004.

I think the words of Attorney General Eric Holder, who called for a national dialogue on race today, are appropriate:

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in two many ways, a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issue in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial

Even if you ignored the obvious dog whistle, it still wouldn’t be funny.

So I regsitered, and yet my comment is not showing up. Is there a waiting period?

Exactly, Ben D.  Forgetting everything else (as though that were possible!), in what context is a bullet-riddled monkey in a puddle of blood funny?

Not funny.  Being as white as I am, simply just traced back to the Mad Lyme Monkey ‘news’ from a few days ago.  I didn’t even think about the second level connotations.  But this why I read this blog.

Pam, you are right on with the quote from AG Eric Holder. I have had students try to put forth the idea that the need to address/examine/interrogate issues of race/racism in the US is over (without being able to substantiate their claim) and every day I see and experience numerous examples to the contrary.

I sent the cartoon on to some of my friends who are teaching race and media classes this semester and am very interensted to see what their students will make of this image. This may get me slammed, but sometimes as someone who studies and teaches race, I get a little excited when these types of images crop up. It gives me something to show to people in the hopes that maybe THIS time they will get it. I don’t want them perpetuated, I wish they didn’t exist and the thinking that creates them makes me sick, but holy fuck they can be great for class discussion.

This is just an aside; I printed the image out and handed it to my mother (who also teaches) and she had a very visceral reaction. She dropped it and the flipped it over and slammed her hand on top of it. I also felt even more sickened when I was holding it in my hands then when I was seeing it on a screen. Perhaps that’s just the by-product of growing up slightly pre-digital, it felt so much more real (and therefor so much more repugnant) when it was on paper.

There was another political cartoon a week ago comparing Obama to a scary black street thug holding up the good white folk by declaring he was going to bust a cap in their salary.

I saw that one.  It made me want to break things.

Yeah, I just about lost my shit when I heard about this one.  I yelled, I swore, I flailed… then I got really mad.

Between this and the thug cartoon, I’m wondering if political cartoonists aren’t living in some kind of time warp where they’re stuck in the era where this would have been seen as okay - like the alternate 50s that conservatives think really existed where Teh Wimminz and Brown Peeplez Knew their Place, where there was no crime or injustice because straight white conservative christian men were utterly unopposed, and that they want to “bring America back to”.

If these hacks have learned of some kind of dimensional portal that takes them to where this is funny, I want in on their technology.  Mostly so I can blow that dimension into so much cosmic dust and (hopefully) prevent this kind of garbage from happening again.

By the way, Pam, you used self-referencing links at the bottom of the post - which means all those links refer to things that aren’t here and just link back to this post.

I’m trying really hard to see any angle to this cartoon besides “it sure would be funny if that monkey Obama got shot,” but I just can’t.  Did the Post even bother trying to float an alternative explanation?  Or do they just generically stand by it, because freedom of speech is sacred and whatnot?

Did the Post even bother trying to float an alternative explanation?

From the AP’s article on it:

In a statement, Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan said: “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.”

So yes, they did - for all it matters.  Nobody with two brain cells to fire a synapse between is going to buy it.

The only alternative interpretation is that Nancy Pelosi is the bullet-ridden chimp, because the House Democrats, not Obama, wrote the stimulus bill.

That doesn’t sound very good, either.

Chuck D on the New York Post:  “The nation’s oldest, continuously published daily piece of bullshit.”

It’s free speech, so it’s protected, I guess.

I’d shout “Boycott!”, but the Post isn’t worth fish wrapping anyway.

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.

Horseshit. I’m a southern white male. I know exactly what this cartoon is supposed to mean, and it’s not that!

In other words, the most generous interpretation is that Congress, and not Obama, is an out of control animal that needs to be shot.

At least that’s not racist! /facepalm

By the way, Pam, you used self-referencing links at the bottom of the post - which means all those links refer to things that aren’t here and just link back to this post.

Fixed.

I know, it means that there’s a racist white cop who, even in as serious a situation as this, can’t help but compare an ape to President Obama!  I mean, if I were in CYA mode at the Post, I’d try to put that spin on it.  But they really don’t care enough to come up with a persuasive excuse, do they?

If I were the Post cartoonist and I wanted to make it a bit more subtle as a dog whistle, I would have at least made one of the cops black. This guys is racist and stupid!

If I were the Post cartoonist and I wanted to make it a bit more subtle as a dog whistle, I would have at least made one of the cops black. This guys is racist and stupid!

Or given the monkey a typewriter at the very least (making at least a half-assed attempt at referencing the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters coming up with all sorts of stuff, which at least is a reason to make it a monkey, and could serve as a critique of the bill ...sort of…)

But that’s just covering up the racism better, of course, not making it *less* racist. This thing is shockingly blatant and I’m most astonished that they didn’t even care to *try* and mask that.

But that’s just covering up the racism better, of course, not making it *less* racist. This thing is shockingly blatant and I’m most astonished that they didn’t even care to *try* and mask that.

Yeah, I totally agree. This just didn’t even try. Some heads better roll over this if the NY Post knows what is economically good for them.

Never put to racism what can be put to pure stupidity.  Let’s put this in context. 

1) A chimpanzee had escaped from its owner, attacked a woman who was a friend of the owner (badly mangling her face), and then was killed by police officers.  This happened in Connecticut and had been featured in the paper. 

2) Does anyone really think that Obama personally wrote the stimulus bill? 

3) The cartoonist is attempting to say that this “stupid” bill reads like it was written by a chimp. 

I have to admit that when I saw the cartoon, I did not read anything racist into it.  It never occurred to me to link the author of the stimulus bill with the President.  What I linked with the President was “they’ll”.  Would I be shocked if my interpretation turned out to be wrong? Not really.

Sorry, Mitch and Tom, but there is a larger context of referring to black men as monkeys.  You cannot simply ignore that connotation and claim that this cartoon is completely innocent.

Well, you can, but then you’re just as racist and ignorant as the Post.

Seriously, it’s not okay to refer to black men as monkeys.  It is different from drawing W as a chimp because of the history of our country.

We are not in a post-racial world yet.  This cartoon makes it perfectly obvious why not.

Again, I’m in the “target demographic” for these kinds of cartoons and I know what it means. They don’t even pretend to hide it.

How about “Guess they’ll have to find someone else to run Bank of America” or “Guess they’ll have to find someone else to run Newscorp”? Not as “funny”? Why not?

What LauraB said, and the placement of the cartoon opposite a photo of Obama signing the stimulus bill doesn’t leave much room for a benefit of doubt.

The very best possible take on this is that it’s incredibly stupid and insensitive.  That’s the best case: the artist and layout editor were too incompetent at their jobs to understand how this would look.  If this had come from an artist without a history of making monkey references of Obama, or really any paper but the fucking Post, it might be worth considering that it wasn’t deliberate dogwhistle racism, just an honest mistake.  But this isn’t the Times.  It’s the Post.  Benefit of the doubt in this case is disingenuous excusing of known racists.

The guy had an idea that he wanted to use the dead ape to symbolize something to do with the economy.

That works only if the cops have a big sign on them saying, say “Congressional Law Makers” and the ape has a big sign on it saying, say “Prospects of Recovery”.  That might work.

Alas, I don’t see them.  Do you?

“The nation’s oldest, continuously published daily piece of bullshit.”

Weirdly enough, until Murdoch bought it in 1977, The Post was a liberal paper.

Though 32 years of continuously published bullshit is still a pretty damn long time…

Man, I hate that… the “That’s not what we meant at all, you hysterical buncha babies…” wink at the knuckle-draggers while gaslighting the rest of us—all of us knowing exactly what we’re seeing there in black and white.

So, I took a peek over at the white pride forum (I can’t help myself. I have to look.) to see what they thought of the cartoon, and they totally got it. They were hi-fiving each other and congratulating The Post, and looking forward to all the libtards dropping like flies onto their fainting couches. There was no “I don’t see this as racist at all. Clearly its a commentary on the stimulpfffffftwhatever.” No, it was all “Damn straight Obama’s a monkey! You gotta love the Post!!!” THEY knew exactly what they were looking at, too.

Well, you can, but then you’re just as racist and ignorant as the Post.

Oh, I see.  Well, if you don’t agree with me and see things exactly the way I do then you are a fucking asshole. 

I hadn’t realized that stupidity was the preferred method of conversation here.  I’ll keep that in mind in the future.

As far as the Delonas 10 “best”, not one of them is racist.  They are all stupid, most are anti-gay (Delonas seems to have a serious problem with gay people), and one is actually marginally funny (the one labeled women:whores - which makes me wonder if the person who collected them thinks that women who cheat on their husbands are whores).

I doubt very much that Delonas was being racist.  I think he saw pictures of the chimp the cops had shot the previous day and the thought that came into his mind was that he could use that to make fun of the stimulus bill.

So, I took a peek over at the white pride forum (I can’t help myself. I have to look.) to see what they thought of the cartoon, and they totally got it.

Interesting.  So I assume you voted for McCain because Al Queda supported Obama for president.  Going to see what stupid people say to vindicate your position is… well, stupid.

Tom: Bye now, have a nice day, prick.

What LauraB said, and the placement of the cartoon opposite a photo of Obama signing the stimulus bill doesn’t leave much room for a benefit of doubt.

That’s not quite the way it was.  The picture was on page 11 and the cartoon on page 12 which means you had to turn the page to see the cartoon.  The cartoon was not opposite the photo of Obama.

Tom: Bye now, have a nice day, prick.

I bet you worked on that for hours.  Seriously, are you so insecure that anyone who tries to point out another interpretation of something has to be insulted by you?  The truth is that if you yell wolf when there is no wolf then no one will listen to you when the wolf shows up.  This cartoon is stupid but innocent.  The chimp is not Obama.  The chimp is Travis the chimp who was the front page story of every tabloid in NYC the day before the cartoon was published.

Aaaww, isn’t it cute how the little troll is scrambling to prove how superior he is to everyone else?

As far as the Delonas 10 “best”, not one of them is racist.

Clearly you missed the Al Sharpton/Fernando Ferrer cartoon.  In case you are unfamiliar, Sharpton is a well-known advocate for the African-American community in New York City, and Fernando Ferrer is Puerto Rican American politician from the Bronx who was the Democratic candidate for mayor in the last election.  To fully spell it out for you, the cartoon seems to be trying to say that Ferrer is in the pocket of Sharpton and the Black community in general, and thus appeals to voters’ racism:  Oooooh, scary minorities getting together to gang up on the whitefolks! 

The picture was on page 11 and the cartoon on page 12 which means you had to turn the page to see the cartoon.  The cartoon was not opposite the photo of Obama.

Yes, because readers would otherwise never have gotten any idea that the latest stimulus package was considered one of Obama’s pet projects…

The chimp is not Obama.  The chimp is Travis the chimp who was the front page story of every tabloid in NYC the day before the cartoon was published.

So Travis the chimp wrote the stimulus bill before he ran amok?

Seriously, I’m not getting the funny here.  It’s pretty strained to try and link a chimpanzee who mauled someone specifically with the authors of the stimulus bill and not, say, directly comparing the bill itself and the chimp. 

There are ways to work criticism of the economy and/or stimulus bill into a joke involving Travis the chimp, but this one makes no sense unless you’re trying to say that the authors of the stimulus bills are chimpanzees.  Which takes you right back to, “Hmm, what ethnic group in this country has a long history of being called ‘apes’ or ‘chimpanzees’?”

I’m guessing Tom is someone who thinks “Mallard Fillmore” is TOTALLY knee-slapping.

In case you are unfamiliar, Sharpton is a well-known advocate for the African-American community in New York City, and Fernando Ferrer is Puerto Rican American politician from the Bronx who was the Democratic candidate for mayor in the last election.

I live in NY so I know the story.  The cartoon is saying the Ferrer kissed Sharpton’s ass.  So?  How is that racist?  Everyone in NY knew that Ferrer kissed Sharpton’s ass to get his endorsement.  The cartoon had nothing to do with scary minorities but rather that Ferrer had no spine and didn’t stand up to Sharpton.  Ferrer having no spine, in this and many other things, is the reason that he lost.

Even the author of the web site seems to be more concerned that Delonas drew Sharpton with a big ass.

So Travis the chimp wrote the stimulus bill before he ran amok?

Seriously, I’m not getting the funny here.

If you were a Republican reader of the NY Post then maybe you would.  The joke is that the stimulus bill sucks because it was written by Travis.  Funny?  If it was then it would have been the first funny cartoon Delonas every wrote.

I’m guessing Tom is someone who thinks “Mallard Fillmore” is TOTALLY knee-slapping.

So I’m a troll and a Mallard Fillmore lover because I don’t agree with you?  I’m guessing that you are 14 and your mom doesn’t let you out during the week.  I’ll bet I’m closer to the truth than you are.  By the way, how many hours did you volunteer helping to get Obama elected?

It seems like if for some peculiar reason you really wanted to draw a cartoon that connected the chimp story to the stimulus bill via an impression that both are running amok or something, you could have Obama and Pelosi and Reid all looking at a newspaper whose headline says “Chimp Gunned Down”... and then the Dems say to each other, “I guess we’ll have to find another way to draft the next stimulus bill.”  That’s the same unfunny concept, but, here’s the wild part—you don’t have to freakin’ draw a dead animal in a puddle of blood.  Delonas is going out of his way to draw the version of the “joke” that requires a mutilated animal.  To me, that’s more than a little disturbing.

Tom P: It seems like you are saying you are an Obama supporter, so maybe it is possible to get through to you and explain why this cartoon is racist. You don’t need to look into the heart or mind of the creator or instigator of something to decide that it is racist.

Racism is objective, not subjective. Letting the white, privileged creator or publisher of a cartoon decide whether it is or is not racist (or whether they’ll admit it is racist) is absurd. The perspective that is better able to see racism is the victim. One of the things about white privilege is that it makes it harder to see racism. Plus, very few people are willing to admit they’ve done something racist, so the typical reaction from the instigator is extreme defensiveness, usually along the lines of pretending the victims lack a sense of humor.

A cover story that this is *really* about something else and not racist is just that, a cover story. But even if the cover is what the author had in mind (and how can we know what was in his mind?) it doesn’t make the resulting product any less offensive.

I was trying to look for some Racism 101 info to point you towards, and hopefully someone else will be able to share some links. Shakesville’s “Feminism 101” posts are helpful: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2004/10/feminism-101.html

Based on Trolling Tom’s comments, I’m wagering he’s a racist Republican 40-something who’s pissed that he’s out of touch with everything current, his beliefs are rightfully being called into question, and he’s losing his hair, so he has to take it out on people who are younger, more enlightened, and just plain smarter than he is.

I deal with a regular troll just like you, Tommy Boy.  All I have to do to get him to go away is remind him that he’s a man twice my age who spends his day harassing me and people who think like me because we’re not him.

You might want to take a few hours and wrap your diseased little mind around that.

Funny?  If it was then it would have been the first funny cartoon Delonas every wrote.

Which is why you’re defending it to the death.  Gotcha.

So I’m a troll and a Mallard Fillmore lover because I don’t agree with you?

It’s more the willful blindness that gave you away.  Seriously, you’re claiming you grew up in the United States and never—not once—heard black people referred to as “monkeys” or “chimps” or “apes”?  Seriously?

I’m guessing that you are 14 and your mom doesn’t let you out during the week.  I’ll bet I’m closer to the truth than you are.

If by “closer” you mean, “Off by 26 years and 2,000 miles,” then I guess you win.

By the way, how many hours did you volunteer helping to get Obama elected?

About 10.  Some of us liberals have jobs, you know.  We’re not all living off welfare waiting for the stimulus bill to give us free money.

Plus you must have been living under a rock to not have gotten the Obama = monkey / chimp references going on during the election, and to think that you could publish this and not have those considered together is patently ridiculous. Travis may have lent a convenient smokescreen to let people think there are no racial connotations, but almost nobody is buying it (except trolls). The “joke” that Travis actually wrote the stimulus bill but was accidentally shot, because only a silly chimp would write such a silly stimulus bill, doesn’t even have the ghost of humor about it.

This from an upstate NYer who got to hear all day about the damn chimp. One look at this even without a picture of Obama nearby did not require an explanation.

Interesting.  So I assume you voted for McCain because Al Queda supported Obama for president.  Going to see what stupid people say to vindicate your position is… well, stupid.

pssst… Tom… I don’t know how to tell you this, but you know, you posted this on blog where “stupidity is the preferred method of communication.”

Anyway, really, I don’t think you’re stupid for being here, even if you do (which has nothing to do with whether I think you’re stupid generally, and anyone can tell I don’t—I definitely didn’t say that).

You know what I find really interesting is that both the people who fight racism and the people who make no bones about their racism, see the cartoon the same way. It’s clear and visceral, and we all get it.  The closet racists—who want to engage in polite politlcal discourse and so have to contort themselves into all kinds of complicated knots in order to appeal to their whackadoo base while making it seem that they don’t believe what they really want you to know they believe—are the first ones who will accuse us of getting all twisty and convoluted with language.

So, the Post denies that this cartoon is racist, and it’s just plain obvious because of all these subtle, convoluted things (well, this is Obama’s stimulus package, and despite the fact that we are going to hold him personally responsible for it if the economy fails, he didn’t actually write it himself, and the chimp actually represents the economy, because it is dead…). And here you are, on this stupid website, explaining the subtext of this very innocent, multifaceted, intellectual one-panel comic that incorporates the current events of the day with our complex econimic situation.

The genius of one-panel cartoons is that you don’t have to sit around teasing out the subtext. It gives you the whole story right away. If an artist has the gift, the cartoon will hit home instantly, everything will just pull together. Essentially, if you have to explain it, it doesn’t work. This cartoon elicited exactly the response that this type of comic is supposed to. So, what’s happening is that the comic did what it was supposed to do, very elegantly. It worked like a one-panel strip is supposed to. We got it; the racists got it—really, like: boom! It worked. It’s all there.

But, in this case, with this artist, you really have to put aside the way comics work in order to “get it.” So, either the guy sucks mightily as a cartoonist, and should not have been published (I’m sure there were plenty of submissions from cartoonists who know their craft), or he did exactly what he meant to do. I’m gonna go with Occam’s razor here.

Every now and then, I write that the USA is a deeply racist society; most recently I did so on one of these threads Pam puts up. (That particular one vanished and did not post, but y’all have seen what I have to say about it before).

And every now and then I wonder; am I just being pointlessly repetitive? Have I lost perspective? Am I nuts?

A lot of the stuff in the long list Pam collated for this post for instance, was put out by individual partisan wackos and might have been appreciated only by a handful of other partisan wackos—one might hope.

Well, thank you New York Post for my reality check! Partisan—yes. (Worse—they aren’t just pro-Republican; they will support anyone who is proto-, crypto-, or just plain -fascist). Whacked out—yep. Of, by, and for, a mere “handful” of outliers—not so much!

It is interesting that even while slanting everything toward a demographic that is obviously outright and openly racist, the Post, and so many other obvious racists out there, seeks the fig leaf of plausible deniability still yet. We don’t actually have laws making it illegal to be an open racist, so I have to wonder at the mechanisms in place that keep the most frank and direct statements of their racist worldview from appearing in print, when it is so obvious that so many Americans do think—consciously, not just as some subtextual mental habit—that there is a hierarchy of values ranking the “races” they perceive.

I think it’s an extension of something I wrote about here* responding to Dana who alleged that the media have a liberal bias. As it happens, others quickly rebutted the particular “evidence” he “cited” but I took him at his word to make the larger point.

We don’t see frank, direct defenses of racist ideology in public because, as I outlined in that post on the origins of Republican ideology in general, racism too serves a vital ideological function. Ideology means essentially “a system of ideas that have easily demonstrated falsehoods embedded in them, but is thought of as true because the falsehoods serve a vital social function.” It is thought warped around an unthinkable reality, in the service of continuing to think in service of maintaining that reality.

Well, Adolf Hitler did the world a favor and demonstrated for us why and how racist thought is such ideology, in service of a truly unspeakable reality. It just isn’t possible to defend racism openly anymore and not be an obvious fascist, and worse, expose in the very act of speaking what’s wrong with being a fascist. It undermines the purpose of racist ideology to be too clear about it in public; there is a second layer of thought-warp in place to cover the hole that has worn in the first one. This is why it stays just below the radar of clear, unambiguous statements.

But it is there, obviously there, quite real, as real, solid, and malicious as a U-boat firing a torpedo.

——
* According to “Preview,” the “hot link” on each comment in a thread doesn’t seem to actually take you to that comment but only to the thread as a whole. If anyone cares to follow what I wrote there, it was timestamped 02/17 at 08:43PM. That’s what it says in my windows anyway; I seem to recall we had the option of using our local time in setup and I chose that—my local time is Pacific so YMMV! Enjoy!

““Stupidity’ is what happens when clueless, navel-gazing white guys try to make the rules about what is and is not racist.” Dan, Grand High Emperor of Bananas Foster

I believe Dan has captured the essence of the emotionalism underlying this cartoon. It’s insensitive for the white majority to define what is and is not racist. I view this in much the same way that I view complaints of sexual harassment reported by my staff. I need not personally agree that the reported behavior was harassment. That the employee found the actions to constitute harassment is sufficient justification for me to take the complaint seriously. I also believe the daily onslaught of openly racist attacks on President Obama has produced a hyper-sensitivity to race-baiting among Americans of color. History has shown that violence against others is typically preceded by a campaign of dehumanizing rhetoric that predisposes the public to acts of barbarous ignorance.

The cartoon is saying the Ferrer kissed Sharpton’s ass.  So?  How is that racist?

Oh, I see.  You failed English class due to your singular inability to understand symbolism.  You also must have missed that time in History or Civics or whatever when you talked about political cartoons and what the point of them is. 

You know, while you’re online, you might want to google up some basic information and print it out.  You know, stuff like “How To Breathe” and “10 Hints To Avoid Choking On Your Own Saliva”. 

I’ll never understand why racists would actually rather people believe they are world-class ignoramuses.

I’ll never understand why racists would actually rather people believe they are world-class ignoramuses.
The Opoponax on 02/19 at 05:36 AM

I believe my post on the ideological demand that racism must operate below the horizon of explicit, frank expression covers that. Pretending to a kind of ignorance that puts the burden of pointing out the actual thought processes involved on anti-racists is normal.

So normal, in fact, that we comment a lot on it here—it leads directly to that oft-remarked phenomenon of Republicans and other reactionaries saying we are the racists for having the gall to observe racism going on.

I trust you do understand, Oppo.

Certainly the actual racists do.

He is kissing Sharpton’s ass in the cartoon because he is trying to mend his relationship with the black community.

Uhhh, yes, exactly.  This is seen by the cartoonist and by extension the Post, as a bad thing.  At best, a shifty (brown) politician’s willingness to lick ass in order to get what he wants, and at worst, an appeal to racism (Ferrer USED to be on our team against Teh Blax, but now he’s kissing Sharpton’s ass and you just KNOW what that means!!!11!!1!!!).

Very few Democrats get their political news and opinion from the Post, and the Post has a very clear reputation as an arch-conservative paper, so it’s very unlikely that either the editorial team or the political cartoonist they’ve hired are assuming that their audience is composed of liberal Democrats who think Ferrer is too conservative on racial issues.  The absolute best reading you can come up with for this cartoon is that they’re trying to foment horizontal hostility between the Black and Hispanic communities in hopes of scaring Blacks away from voting for Ferrer.  This reading is pretty much impossible to come away with, however, if you’ve actually seen the cartoon.

It’s a terrible cartoon and most likely racist, but don’t forget all the times that Dubya was compared to a monkey during his presidency.

It’s a terrible cartoon and most likely racist, but don’t forget all the times that Dubya was compared to a monkey during his presidency.

He was compared to a monkey because of his limited intellectual capacity. Turnabout is irrelevant in this context.

It seems very likely that this guy’s intention was to use the shooting of the chimp as some kind of metaphor for the economy

Not really… even by the cartoonist’s defense, the idea is that the stimulus bill is so crazy it must have been written by a rampaging chimp.  The fact that the chimp was shot isn’t actually even part of the political allegory.  The core of the gag is that out-of-control-ness is something the bill and the chimp have in common.  And then Delonas gets to draw a dead chimp for, like, extra hilarity.

“People who get oversensitive about political cartoons need to find something better to do with their time. “

Which is code for:  Mitchforth is privileged, blind to reality and (hilariously) arrogant. 

We get it - you are incapable of seeing what is obvious and offensive, therefore your opinion is correct and everyone else is wrong.  Run along now and let the adults talk.

It’s a terrible cartoon and most likely racist, but don’t forget all the times that Dubya was compared to a monkey during his presidency.

It is racist, and that racism makes all the difference.  There’s no centuries-old tradition of comparing white guys (as a group) to chimpanzees. 

And let’s not even get into what would have happened if a major newspaper had suggested that Dubya should be shot.

Mitch, all you’re saying is that all elements have to be in alignment for the form to work, and one of these elements includes the reader’s ability to get it, or a shared point of reference. The fact that it all has to be there doesn’t make it a weakness; it just means that doing it well is an art. As with most cultural offerings, there are a lot of lame artists out there churning out crap every damn day, but that doesn’t mean that there’s an inherent problem with the form. When it works, it works. And in this case, it definitely worked exactly like it was supposed to.

Whose team? The white supremacist contingency in New York City local politics?

Conservative racist whites’ team.

And if you really think that because NYC politics tend to skew to the left of the Klan, therefore nobody in New York could possibly be racist, well, you obviously don’t know much about this city.  Though I have always wondered how a city with such a liberal reputation could play host to an immensely popular hunk of fishwrap like the Post, the bottom line is that the fact that NYC is on the true blue end of the spectrum doesn’t make the Post an anti-racist paper.

Ew… just to clarify, I’m not saying that this cartoon doesn’t suck. It’s terrible. But it’s effective—like a hammer to the head.

There was a story about police shooting a chimp.  The guy drew a comic about police shooting a chimp.

Then explain why, now that the chimp is dead, “they” will have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.

The implication is that a replacement is needed for the dead chimp who wrote the existing stimulus bill.
And who did write the existing stimulus bill?
A. House Democrats
B. Nancy Pelosi
C. Barack Obama

Considering that a common slur for black people is “porch monkey*,” the linkage is obvious.

*Clerks II

Though I have always wondered how a city with such a liberal reputation could play host to an immensely popular hunk of fishwrap like the Post

You forget that this is the same city that elected Rudy Giuliani mayor. Twice.

Exhibit 37,895,432 (and “A” on this thread) of my thesis that our country is racist as all Hell—and will “plausibly” deny it to the bitter end—

Mitchforth.

If the caption said “They’ll have to find someone else to draw the next Post editorial cartoon,” would that be funny?

You know, I’m not sure if the artist had an actively racist intent from the start.  But it’s kind of a reach to posit that he’s so ignorant of the history of monkey images that he shouldn’t've thought twice before drawing this up.

In any event, IMHO the cartoon’s biggest fault is that the crazy chimp = author of stimulus bill analogy leaves no place for the act of shooting that provides the cartoon’s whole plot and raison d’etre.  What does shooting the chimp add to the premise?  Why didn’t he think that through?  He drew a dead chimp/smoking gun cartoon without figuring out what the death or the gun should represent!

IMHO this is kind of like saying that the stimulus bill is so krazy that Nadya Suleman must have written it… without, you know, accounting for the part of the story where she has eight babies.

Mitchforth, by your reasoning, the cartoon isn’t racist, but pure gibberish with no connect between the dialogue bubbles and the action depicted. You say, “Well, the bill wasn’t written by Obama, technically” and “the cartoonist means the ape wrote the bill”, but all the publicity around the stimulus package has associated it with Obama. You pretend the cartoon was *really* about the ape shooting, and the cartoonist was looking for a way to get the economy in it, but all of your muddled explanations turn it into something involving no analogies whatsoever, just a complete non sequiteur. And that’s not how editorial cartoons work.
If he wanted to do a story on the ape with the cartoon, he could use the cops to demonstrate the trigger-happy dangers the cops can pose to anyone; or bring in a comment on the import of exotic animals as a threat to public health and safety.
But if he wants to use the ape as an analogy to something else, then the ape is no longer the ape; he stands in for something, and that is the author of the stimulus package.

Mitch, Do you think that, even if the artist had only pure intentions, that it managed to get through the editorial process without a single person saying, “Hey, you know… this might generate a real shitstorm.” Everyone who saw the cartoon before it was published is just so innocent of all racist sensibilities, so lacking any cultural point of reference whatsoever, but at the same time, so up on politics and current events—so ivory tower—that this cartoon never caused anyone to think twice?

I completely agree with FlipYrWhig: if this cartoon is about what you say it’s about, then it’s complete nonsense. Who killed the stimulus? Is it dead? Who are the cops? This is not just hamhanded, it’s just gratutitous idiocy. You say that The cartoon’s critics suppose that the entire purpose of the cartoon is a roundabout way of calling Obama a monkey, or for calling for violence against him. But, this isn’t a roundabout way of saying it. It’s rather straightforward— as I said, it’s as subtle as a hammer to the head.

What doesn’t make a bit of sense is arguing that the cartoon is both hamhanded and complex. You have to understand that Obama didn’t write the thing (despite the fact that he is going to be held responsible for it, it is his thing) among other complicated little things, but you also have to understand that, despite the fact that the artist had all these factors at play here, it’s just a non-sequitur—it didn’t actually mean anything at all. Gah, it seems to require an epic feat of compartmentalization to have all this sit right with you, when the obvious thing is just makes so much sense.

It didn’t occur to me that the dead chimp was a call to violence against Obama (even though it’s a ghastly violent comic), so much as it is saying Obama’s stimulus is DOA. No one is going to associate the stimulus package with whoever actually penned the thing. What the heck?  It makes utter sense that Obama would be the face of the package—thus a dead chimp. That is the simplest, most straightforward interpretation of this cartoon.

“If the monkey is Obama…”  Stop right there.  If the monkey is Obama, in this case gunned down by white cops, I might add,  just what the fuck else matters?  That they didn’t mean to call him a monkey?  So what, they did.  That they didn’t mean to imply he should be shot?  So what, they did.  That they really meant something else entirely?  So what, this is how people read it.  That they’re actually morons who don’t know how to put together a coherent cartoon that means something other than what people are reading?  So. The. Fuck. What?

Who cares, at that point, what the artist and editor intended?  AT BEST, they have demonstrated that they are morons if they really did not intend or expect anyone to see their reference to Obama- or Obama’s stimulus package- as a monkey gunned down by cops as if it were racist.  Morons.  Frackin’ idiots whose opinions on anything are worthless.

So what if it refers to the chimp-rampage the previous day?  It then goes on to symbolically connect the dead chimp to Obama through the reference to the stimulus package. 

You seem to think that it’s all just a misunderstanding, New Yorkers know that it refers to a specific incident that the country at large doesn’t know about.  What, do you think non-NYCers never heard about the chimp rampage, that it was a locals-only story?  It was on CNfuckinN, it was a national news story.  Why, even out here in the sticks of the Southwest, we heard about that.  If anything, what might have remained a NYC-centric or regional story was the one about a cartoon in a NY daily paper.  That story went national, why?  Because it pissed off a lot of people, starting with New Yorkers.

So what?

It is obviously racist.  The audience at large sees it as racist, though also incoherent, and question it.  Anti-racists see it as racist, don’t much care that it is also incoherent, and condemn it.  ACTUAL RACISTS see it as racist, recognize it as a shout-out to themselves (whether intended or not), and applaud it.

Maybe you think that ilsita’s earlier point about the white-power crowd’s glee at this cartoon is irrelevant?  Bullshit.  Who the hell do you think buys the Post, anyway?  Racist assholes.  The editors know their audience and they cater to them.  Racists like this shit.  And you know what?  They don’t go out of their way to excuse it as non-racist.  They do accept the editors’ choice of making public denials as a political necessity, but they’re not stupid enough to take those denials seriously. 

You are, though.

Why, it doesn’t say anything at all, not really.  It’s all in your heads.  You’re too sensitive.  You’re too defensive.  This is all your fault.  We’re so sorry that you’re too sensitive to see how well-intentioned we were when we made this totally honest mistake. 

You don’t really understand how dog-whistle racial politics works, do you?  I’d recommend learning a thing or two about it before commenting on it a dozen times in its defense. 

Lesson One: Deny, deny, deny.  Deny that anything ever said is really racist.  Unless someone comes right and says, “blacks are bad” that person has a reasonable excuse to say anything less obvious.  In every case of racist acts, racist words, racist imagery, contend that racism is not the motivator, offense was not intended, there are mitigating or obfuscatory facts in this one case, nobody could reasonable see it as racist, anyone who sees racism here is delusional, etc.  Just deny and keep denying.

Lesson Two: Rely on others to defend you.  It all depends on people like you willing to condemn everyone else for not accepting thinly plausible denials of racists, which encourages the public at large to accept decreasingly plausible denials.  Because, deep down, you DO know that it is racist.  But for whatever reason, you don’t want to condemn it and are instead willing to go to the mats to defend it.

That’s why, even if I were to accept their denial of intentional racism, I’d still condemn them.  It’s also why I don’t accept their denial.  And I don’t understand your continued and vociferous defense of it.

Why mitch?  I don’t think you’re a racist yourself, at least I haven’t gotten that vibe from you before.

If you want to defend a racist paper’s right to free expression on libertarian grounds, have at it.  Nobody here would argue with you on that point, actually.  But you’re insisting that this isn’t racist.  You’re going way out on a limb to tell us not to believe what we see in front of our own eyes.

Further, I think you’re just making yourself look either cluelessly in denial about racism in America or dishonestly in defense of racists. 

Either way is cowardly- exactly what A.G. Holder is speaking of.  The cowards are the ones in denial, who try to shut down others who condemn racism. “Oh, you’re just seeing things that aren’t there.”  Paternalistic, privelege-soaked chickenshit.  Or worse (and I can’t believe you actually went there) “Some folks are just making trouble for their own ends.” 

You want to pretend there’s no problem because you’re afraid of the implications of it: that we live in a racist society and if you don’t want that, you have to help do something about it.  It’s so much easier, though cowardly, to avoid acknowleging the problem at all- which requires denying obvious signs of it and attacking those who point them out.

Pam, You say “Never mind the fact that the cartoon calls for violence against the “author” of the bill, who happens to be POTUS. “

You cannot pick and choose which parts of the cartoon are literal, and which parts are figurative. You interpret the cartoon figuratively, i.e. the author is saying that Obama represents the chimp, yet you interpret the actions of the police officers literally, i.e. the author is literally calling for people to shoot Obama. You can’t have it both ways. The entire cartoon is figurative

I don’t think the intention of the author was to say that “Obama is a chimp and should be shot”. Anyone who really thinks that that was the intent of the cartoon clearly do not understand satire. Having said that, I do understand how the cartoon can be interpreted in that way. The choice of the chimp, and the ambiguity resulting from the lack of an indication of what the chimp represents were bad decisions.

I think it’s sad that a cartoonist and a group of editors do not understand the racial implications of the symbols they choose to use. I also think it’s sad that so much attention can be focused on something that, ultimately, is just bad satire. Is this truly the conversation we should be having about race?

RobW, intent DOES matter. Think about how more vociferous the reaction would be if, say, the New York Post ran an ad from the KKK saying that “Obama should be shot.” Would you equate this and the chimp cartoon as equally abhorrent?  I don’t think they are, but that seems to be what you are saying.

Yes, we live in a racist society. Just because someone defends the author on the grounds that his intent was not racist, does not make that person racist, nor does it mean that they are in denial about the fact that society is racist.

Mark, you said “We don’t actually have laws making it illegal to be an open racist, so I have to wonder at the mechanisms in place that keep the most frank and direct statements of their racist worldview from appearing in print, when it is so obvious that so many Americans do think—consciously, not just as some subtextual mental habit—that there is a hierarchy of values ranking the “races” they perceive.”

I’m not sure that it is “so obvious that so many Americans think consciously….that there is a hierarchy of values ranking the “races” we perceive”.  I mean, isn’t the fact that most people don’t openly say racist things evidence that for the majority of society, these views are no longer acceptable? To suggest that somehow they are just as acceptable to people in their conscious minds, yet not as printed words, just doesn’t correspond to how humans interact.  People express themselves in ways that will deem them acceptable to their peers. If the majority of people held conscious racist views, then wouldn’t the majority of people by engaging in racist speech with each other through the print media?

200 years ago, African Americans were enslaved. 50 years ago, they were fighting for the right to vote. Today, an African-American is president and people are arguing about a New York Post cartoon, and the consensus is (amongst both whites and blacks) that at the very least the cartoon is unacceptable and in poor taste. For me, this is progress. If there is a “ranking of the races” in people’s conscious minds, the space between rankings has certainly shrunk.