New York Post forced to apologize over dead "Obama Chimpanzee" cartoon.

Run_to_da_hills

Critics say the cartoon that appeared in the New York Post implicitly compared President Obama with the primate and evoked a history of racist imagery of Blacks. The chimpanzee was an apparent reference to the 200-pound pet chimpanzee that was shot dead by a police officer in Stamford on Monday, after it mauled a friend of his owner.

Senator Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said in a statement: “I found the Post cartoon offensive and purposefully hurtful.” 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.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5772951.ece

sceptre

Next time they'll have to remember to use a dead donkey. That would at least be moderately funny on three levels.

Pocono Joe

Now spectre, we can’t have any of that in this time of political correctness.
PETA will object to the symbolic shooting of a donkey.
Democrats will object the symbolic use of a donkey being displayed in such a manner.
Gun and ammunition manufacturers will object to the symbolic use of their products used in this manner.
Police officers will object to the symbolic use of a stressful and regrettable situation for political gain.
Greenies will object to the use of woodland products and the carbon footprint for something so trivial.
On and on and on...
Fortunately, jackass people, like those voting for the Porkulus package in its present form, won't get the symbolism.

Sand

Ridiculous nonsense.

Anyone whose offended by a cartoon lampooning a political bill as being written by a chimp needs their cranium removed from their posterior. They are truly morons.

Pocono Joe

I really liked the NY Post’s "apology."

Wednesday's Page Six cartoon - caricaturing Monday's police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy.

It shows two police officers standing over the chimp's body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Almost sound like something I would write.


I bet there would be no complaints here if the cartoon looked like this.

Ruskie4Rent

Whole thing seems a bit overblown. Reminds me of the New Yorker cover and the whole 'lipstick on a pig' thing during the election. Just people using it to paint the other team as arseholes.

The NY Post should've known that people could've seen it as racist though.

Pocono Joe

Another good one today. The Huffington Post (the bastion of Left Wing tolerance and unparalleled research) had to apologize to John Gibson of FoxNews over an doctored video of him comparing Eric Holder (Obama’s Attorney General) to a monkey with a bright blue scrotum, in regards to Holder’s "nation of cowards" comment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/19/john-gibson-compares-eric_n_168377.html

Victor

I think the criticism is partly valid.

If the caption was changed to "One stimulus bill writer down, another 99 to go" it couldn't have been seen as racist (speciesist or politicianist maybe ), but a one chimpanzee, one president implication can be seen.

Sand

Out of curiousity, did anyone here consider the attacks on George Bush as resembling a monkey as being racist?

If not, why not? Because he was white?

Racists....

Overheal

He WAS a monkey though

http://www.bushorchimp.com/

The Raven.

Sand wrote: »

Out of curiousity, did anyone here consider the attacks on George Bush as resembling a monkey as being racist?

If not, why not? Because he was white?

Racists....

Precisely! Try googling 'George Bush monkey'. How many of these sites were forced to apologise?

'Heat' and 'kitchen' come to mind :rolleyes:!!

banquo

More of the 'Bush is stupid' bull****. Whatever you think of the former president comparing him to a chimp does as little for anyone now as it has over the last eight years. For anyone without a real political opinion, it is the safe and lazy and easy way out.

Ask anyone on the street if they think Bush was stupid and they'll say ''of course so'', and stop there. Ask them why and you'll get a mumble about Iraq. Ask the people who mock Bush for being uninformed where Iraq is, how the economy works, how many years of economic growth the man oversaw, how many immigrants he accepted into the country and then press them further. Ask them what racial profiling is, and then ask them who declared the first federal ban on it. Ask them how much in foreign aid the US was paying before and then during his tenure.

But back OT...

Nodin

Sand wrote: »

Out of curiousity, did anyone here consider the attacks on George Bush as resembling a monkey as being racist?

If not, why not? Because he was white?

I'm unaware of a history of slavery, discrimination and of hanging white people from trees in the American South, whilst referring to them as monkeys, apes and the like.

banquo wrote:

Ask anyone on the street if they think Bush was stupid and they'll say ''of course so'', and (...........)during his tenure.

Iraq, alienating Iran, failing to secure Afghanistan, linking US aid to abortion policy, "faith based initiatives", encouraging terrorism, encouraging the Israeli settlememnt push..... The only insulting thing about calling Bush a chimp is that it reflects badly on the many decent members of that species on the planet.

banquo

Nodin wrote: »

Iraq, alienating Iran, failing to secure Afghanistan, linking US aid to abortion policy, "faith based initiatives", encouraging terrorism, encouraging the Israeli settlememnt push.....

BAM! I'm happy with this. These are real points being made.

I'm not a fan of the man myself, but I cannot stand the mediocrity of the 'Bush is a monkey' crap, because it and things like it are nothing but distractions from points like these.

Diogenes

banquo wrote: »

BAM! I'm happy with this. These are real points being made.

Can I also add Katrina (see also; hiring a man who's previous job was judging Arabian horse shows as head of FEMA; not breaking off his holiday for three days during the greatest peace time humanitarian disaster on American soil; and claiming "no one could predict that the levies would break" when that was the exact opposite to what was warned), where was I? Dick Cheney, who didn't so much abuse the ideals of the office of vice president, as ignore them. Fiscal Mismanagement trickle down economics, really?. Enron. Valerie Palme, yes lets expose an undercover CIA agent because they dispute our lies. Trying to make his own family lawyer a supreme court judge, despite her never holding a judicial office in her life. Alberto Gonzales and the firing of Federal DAs who disagreed with government policy. Gitmo. Homeland security Act. Unilateral support for Israeli despite their behaviour in Gaza. The "Mission Accomplished" Banner. Illegal Wiretapping. Nearly restarting the cold war with his missile defence scheme. Pulling out of Kyoto. Arriving into office with the largest budget surplus and leaving office with the next guy to sort out the largest deficit.

Finally The fact that back in 2005 or 2006 when asked if he could name a mistake he had made he couldn't think of any.

I should also point out the above list is off the top head.

I'm not a fan of the man myself, but I cannot stand the mediocrity of the 'Bush is a monkey' crap, because it and things like it are nothing but distractions from points like these.

No it's not it's satire. Its broad stroking satire but hey thats existed for generations. It's suggesting that this is what happens when you try out the theory "any monkey could do that job" or that Bush is the monkey and others are the organ grinder.

Nodin

banquo wrote: »

BAM! I'm happy with this. These are real points being made.

I'm not a fan of the man myself, but I cannot stand the mediocrity of the 'Bush is a monkey' crap, because it and things like it are nothing but distractions from points like these.

The whole chimp thing did take a life of its own, in fairness.

Which reminds me of this.....the real reason for the recession
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/economists_warn_anti_bush

JohnMc1

banquo wrote: »

More of the 'Bush is stupid' bull****. Whatever you think of the former president comparing him to a chimp does as little for anyone now as it has over the last eight years. For anyone without a real political opinion, it is the safe and lazy and easy way out.

The Bush jokes are like fart jokes and toilet humor jokes. Jokes only stupid people laugh at.

Sand

I'm unaware of a history of slavery, discrimination and of hanging white people from trees in the American South, whilst referring to them as monkeys, apes and the like.

So your views are based on concepts and projections like race. Sad, very sad.

Diogenes

JohnMc1 wrote: »

The Bush jokes are like fart jokes and toilet humor jokes. Jokes only stupid people laugh at.

Bollocks the bush administration gave American satirists their finest material for a few generation, blokes like Stewart and Coulbert have had their wit sharpened to Hattori Hanzo qualities.

Katrina, The election, Iraq, these shows reach and pull can get everyone up to the direct inner circle of the previous president and at the same time both candidates for the president on, on several occasions, and at the same time the highest praise they've offered to regular news was post katrina, was to describe the mainstream stations like a drunk stopping some car jackers with a tire iron. Thats it, thats the closest thing to praise regular media gets from the daily show.


Spitting image and Rory Bremmer look dull and blunt with the light of history.

JohnMc1

Diogenes wrote: »

Bollocks the bush administration gave American satirists their finest material for a few generation, blokes like Stewart and Coulbert have had their wit sharpened to Hattori Hanzo qualities.

You proved my point. I wonder how the left will take the eventual Obama jokes [Let's face it. They're asking for it with the "Obama is Black Jesus" bit.]

Running Bing

One thing the election of Barack has really opened my eyes to is the sheer amount of racialism that exists in America.

I admit I was naive and thought that for the majority of people today race just is'nt that big a deal but its clearly still the elephant in the room (probably understandable given history but still regrettable imo).

If anybody believes this cartoon was created or published with the intent of making a racial statement they need their head examined.....its the people who are complaining who jumped to the conclusion Barack=Ape not the NY times. That really begs the question who has the bigger problem?


Until we get past this petty racialism and learn to look past the colour of somebodies skin we will never progress.

banquo

Ah no, there are some really good Bush jokes, just as for other presidents.

God bless The Onion. Been following it for 11 years.

OhNoYouDidn't

Sand wrote: »

Ridiculous nonsense.

Anyone whose offended by a cartoon lampooning a political bill as being written by a chimp needs their cranium removed from their posterior. They are truly morons.

so we ignore the cultural context to the racist use of monkeys as a pejoritive term for black people?

thanks for clearing that up. nothing to see here.

Nodin

JohnMc1 wrote: »

The Bush jokes are like fart jokes and toilet humor jokes. Jokes only stupid people laugh at.

Really? You've done a survey?

The man was an abysmal failure. Its humanity laughing in the face of tragedy, if anything.

Sand wrote:

So your views are based on concepts and projections like race. Sad, very sad. .

No, they're based on historical fact, which can also be described in this case as "context".

Overheal

JohnMc1 wrote: »

You proved my point. I wonder how the left will take the eventual Obama jokes [Let's face it. They're asking for it with the "Obama is Black Jesus" bit.]

pretty well, i thought

GuanYin

I thought the point of the cartoon was "a monkey could have written the stimulus plan" - ya know, like 1 million monkeys at 1 million typewriters....

Conversely, those who saw a monkey and immediately thought "they mean a black person, lets complain" - should really have their racial identification processes analyzed.

Black Swan

"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" was captioned on the cartoon, while two cops blow away a large monkey? Whom else was the cartoon referring to if not Obama, be it a monkey characterization or some other effigy, given the timeliness of the stimulus package bill passage, and the fact that Obama was the principal pushing it?

Secondly, African Americans have been stereotyped in an earlier America by White racists as being akin to monkeys and other types of inhuman apes.

I was shocked by the cartoon caption, combined with the shooting violence! It looked like a cartoon that the American White race supremacist Ku Klux Klan would produce.

It may have been triggered by a different story, but the editors had to realize the smoking gun ramifications of the caption, and the historical significance and lack of sensitivity to American racial discrimination?

GuanYin

Well a monkey was shot in Connecticut they day before the cartoon so it was a topical issue.

I honestly took the cartoon as referring to the monkey shooting while also deriding a stimulus plan. The phrase "a monkey could do that" is pretty commonly used and no-one thinks it a racial slur then.

When someone is stressed in work and suggests to me that "a retard could do" an aspect of my job, I don't automatically assume they are linking the old view of asians have facial features resembling mentally disabled people to me.

It is the same as the "lipstick on a pig" comment and frankly it is embarrassing to see the race card played like this. I hate racism, but when people start playing it like this, it detracts from real complaints.

Black Swan

I'm sitting in a coffee house with a lot of students and faculty, and asked an African American student nearby to view the cartoon (without prior comment by me). He said he had heard about the cartoon, but had not seen it yet. Once viewing it on this thread moments ago, his first comment was that "It was unfortunate that a paper with a large circulation was posting a cartoon that might suggest violence against the current president. Not that the average American citizen would be compelled by such a small thing, but that there were gun-toting nut jobs in America that were just looking for any kind of encouragement, and the fact that police were doing the shooting gave it an official feel that it was OK to blow him away."

GuanYin

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Not that the average American citizen would be compelled by such a small thing, but that there were gun-toting nut jobs in America that were just looking for any kind of encouragement, and the fact that police were doing the shooting gave it an official feel that it was OK to blow him away."

Oh that I agree on. I'm surprised PETA haven't said anything yet. Or bombed the offices of the newspaper.

But let us be honest, there is some terribly irresponsible political spin here. Obama only played the race card once in the elections, and I respect him for that, but those doing it here, do him a dis-service.

Black Swan

Well, I agree with his evaluation of the cartoon when he said it was "unfortunate..."

How did Obama respond to the cartoon, or did he ignore it? I would guess the latter (unless someone brings it up in a press conference).