The scurrilous NY Post should not be able to get away with the blatantly racist cartoon from this past Monday. This is no longer 1960s and Jim Crow America. The days of calling African-Americans monkeys is over. Or is it? Send a message that will no tolerate racism in America. Additionally, to remain silent is help create the conditions for the possible assassination of Barack Obama. Just as it happened in 1960s with JFK and MLK jr. The right is clearly to foment hatred of Obama for political reasons. We saw it during the campaign. They are trying to appeal to the dormant feelings of Americans still instinctually harbored by many Americans. Racism must be killed before it rears it's ugly head again:
Reactions are as varied as they are strong to Tuesday's New York Post cartoon that depicted the police shooting of a chimpanzee. Two police officers, one with a smoking gun, are near the chimp's bullet-pierced body. "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.
Post cartoonist Sean Delonas was using a typical funny-pages theme of linking two current news stories: the shooting of a chimp after it mauled a Connecticut woman and President Obama's signing of the stimulus bill.
But soon after the issue hit newsstands, the Rev. Al Sharpton -- and other black opinion makers like CNN's Roland Martin -- blasted the cartoon as an attack on Obama's skin color and African-Americans in general.
"Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder: Are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?" Sharpton said.
Jelani Cobb, a Spelman College history professor and the author of a forthcoming book about Obama, told CNN that the cartoon offended on many levels.
He winced at the cartoon's gun violence as a stoker to the nervousness some feel about the safety of a black president in a historically racist country.
"When I looked at it, there was no getting around the implications of it," Cobb said. "Clearly anyone with an iota of sense knows the close association of black people and the primate imagery."
[...]New York Post editor Col Allan referred calls to a public relations representative who sent CNN.com this 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."
Delonas is not giving interviews, the PR rep told CNN.
This from the Detroit Free Press:
Maybe the cartoonist was making fun of a chimpanzee mauling a woman nearly to death in Stamford, Conn. If so, shame on him.
NEW YORK POST: See the Sean Delonas cartoon for yourself
Maybe he was taking a swipe at New York cops, implying they'll shoot anything. If so, shame on him.
But more likely, the cartoon is what it was: the use of a centuries-old racist slur to imply that President Barack Obama is a monkey.
You don't need the Rev. Al Sharpton to tell you something is racist.
The insensitive cartoons that somehow get published and the racial epithets that don't go away and the bigoted beliefs that persist despite their falsity all make it clear why February yields a plethora of black history celebrations. It is as if we must affirm ourselves constantly to battle opposing beliefs.
This from Americablog:
And after you read the "excuse" given by the newspaper's editor for the dead monkey cartoon about Obama's economic stimulus package, you really need to check out the same cartoonist's other cartoons, including depicting gays as people who screw sheep, and a cartoon showing Al Qaeda celebrating the Democrats' electoral victory in 2006. This guy really exemplifies what's become of the conservative movement. The best argument they can make about how to proceed in the face of our economic crisis is a racist joke about the assassination of our first black president. The party of Limbaugh, Palin and tax-cheat plumbers lives on.
