The above opinion cartoon appeared in the New York Post on Wednesday. When I first read the headline for this story "Paterson, Sharpton slam NY Post Chimp Cartoon" my immediate thought was "Here we go again..." I am the person that just rolls his eyes whenever someone gets all in a huff about cartoons. They're just cartoons! I also roll my eyes when someone gets all in a huff about some racist comment that someone makes. People can think and say whatever they want. They should not be made to apologize for making a racist comment. They probably should apologize, but thats their prerogative. Bigotry is not a crime. Having everyone hear what you said and know that you're a bigot is punishment enough in my mind. It's just so hard to take anyone seriously when they complain about being called racist names. I was called plenty of names in elementary school, and they were very hurtful and all, but pretty soon I grew up and realized that some people are just plain mean and want to put other people down. This is something I thought people learned before Sr. High. Why are racial comments so different? I really do not know.
I do, however, understand that sometimes racism goes beyond name-calling, and that is a horrible thing indeed. Harrassment and worse things happen to minorities all the time, and I am sympathetic to the hard past that minorities have in this country.
But when I opened the article and saw the cartoon, without reading anything else, the first thought that popped into my head was that the chimp represented President Obama because, while he did not physically write the bill, he definitely "wrote" the bill. I also immediately grasped the fact that the cartoon was also alluding to the chimp who went wild earlier this week, almost killing someone, and died in a hail of police gunfire.
So why is it that someone so "insensitive" to expressions of racial hate like myself immediately drew the parallel between Obama and the monkey? I think that's because it's so obvious what the authors were saying. The "excuse" for the cartoon is that the chimp represents congress, not the President. All of the defenders of the cartoon also say things like "The cartoon is actually about a story about a monkey who attacked a person earlier. If you didn't hear that story, you wouldn't get the cartoon." Of course, this is true, but not for the reason they're implying. I did hear the story about the dead chimp, and I got the joke as referring to Obama. The two stories are not mutually exclusive. A cartoon can refer to both stories! The stimulus is President Obama's pet project, his face is all over it, and he is black. Now don't get me wrong, I have no idea what the author was really trying to say, and frankly, I couldn't care less. But what boggles my mind is that the Post would actually print something like this that would so obviously create a massive firestorm. It seems to me that anyone, whether they think this was racially motivated or not, would at least notice the obvious connotations that a reference to a monkey and the stimulus bill have. My guess is that they fully realized this would create a firestorm of media attention, and did it for the publicity.
But before we jump up and say "apologize for that cartoon!" we should remember all the times President Bush has been compared to a monkey (nearly innumerably more than Obama). If we truly want racial equality, shouldn't we welcome the monkey comparison?
I do, however, understand that sometimes racism goes beyond name-calling, and that is a horrible thing indeed. Harrassment and worse things happen to minorities all the time, and I am sympathetic to the hard past that minorities have in this country.
But when I opened the article and saw the cartoon, without reading anything else, the first thought that popped into my head was that the chimp represented President Obama because, while he did not physically write the bill, he definitely "wrote" the bill. I also immediately grasped the fact that the cartoon was also alluding to the chimp who went wild earlier this week, almost killing someone, and died in a hail of police gunfire.
So why is it that someone so "insensitive" to expressions of racial hate like myself immediately drew the parallel between Obama and the monkey? I think that's because it's so obvious what the authors were saying. The "excuse" for the cartoon is that the chimp represents congress, not the President. All of the defenders of the cartoon also say things like "The cartoon is actually about a story about a monkey who attacked a person earlier. If you didn't hear that story, you wouldn't get the cartoon." Of course, this is true, but not for the reason they're implying. I did hear the story about the dead chimp, and I got the joke as referring to Obama. The two stories are not mutually exclusive. A cartoon can refer to both stories! The stimulus is President Obama's pet project, his face is all over it, and he is black. Now don't get me wrong, I have no idea what the author was really trying to say, and frankly, I couldn't care less. But what boggles my mind is that the Post would actually print something like this that would so obviously create a massive firestorm. It seems to me that anyone, whether they think this was racially motivated or not, would at least notice the obvious connotations that a reference to a monkey and the stimulus bill have. My guess is that they fully realized this would create a firestorm of media attention, and did it for the publicity.
But before we jump up and say "apologize for that cartoon!" we should remember all the times President Bush has been compared to a monkey (nearly innumerably more than Obama). If we truly want racial equality, shouldn't we welcome the monkey comparison?
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