Reading The Pictures: Killing That Little Monkey

1. The buck(shot) stops here? Well obviously it likens Obama to a monkey, playing on a long-standing African-American racist slur.

2. The cartoon is tying three things together (a real dying economy, a real monkey that ran amok in Connecticut the other day, and the racist stereotype of animalistic tendencies in blacks) to anticipate a recession-driven increase in crime and the need (paging Giuliani!) for some good old right-wing law-and-order. Yeah, two white cops. (Of course, this would have nothing to do with Eric Holder taking over the Justice Department and, among other things, bringing a critical eye to the prison-industrial complex, or more simply, the incarceration of black males for minor drug offenses.) ...Economy in meltdown (perpetrated by white guys on Wall Street)? Play the fear card.

3. To the extent Bush was widely and broadly identified with the chimp (1, 2, 3, etc.), not to mention his role in the historic destruction of the American economy, another insidious thing the image does -- in proposing/swapping Obama for The Chimpster -- is to start to undo the Bush association.

4. And then, from a different angle, there is this from a reader of mine ID'd as "tanker":

"This is more about the conservative worldview then racism. They really think that people hate the stimulus bill and view it as an abomination and a disaster. thus the cartoonist thinks people will get the joke that this thing must've been written by a crazed chimp. Get it? Of course not, because the vast majority of people view the stimulus bill as at least a mainstream idea, if not perfect. To most of us, the joke doesn't make sense, so we immediately assume the chimp is obama. I think this just shows that the cartoonist failed utterly because he's a biased wingnust and sucks at his job, not that he's racist."

Comments

[RTIII]

The most important problem with this "cartoon" is that it incites violence.
.

[o-please]

Incite violence? Where?

[Annette truth teller08]

I think it's time that we stop putting up with this crap...

This cartoon is not subtle in it's depiction of the President being assassinated and someone else having to write the next Stimulus.

Sean Delonas and the folks at the NY Post knew this before publishing it. They just thought that it would create only enough controversy to generate more $$$ for there paper.

Then they figured after a few days (perhaps weeks) it would be back to business as usual.

We can't let this happen. They are counting on the uneducated to put the Fire on this disgusting controversy out.

Sean Delonas needs to be FIRED and the NY Post needs to be reprimanded.

That is the only way this will not happen again.

[tonguetied]

I think the problem is that there are too many people who don't know who wrote the stimulus bill. That really concerns me.
Obama was neither portrayed nor referenced in the cartoon.
I think it's a shame that people fan flames when we have so many other important issues...like what is in the stimulus bill and how that will help us. I want to hear more about that.

[Annette truth teller08]

"They are counting on the uneducated to put the Fire on this disgusting controversy out."

[wrathofwonka2002]

It isn't even a funny cartoon. Why isn't anyone upset about that?

[wanttruth]

The cartoon was disgusting! I'm glad the New York Post is getting heat for it. If this cartoon is a part of a pattern, then, someone needs to clean house.

[pdxbuckeye]

see i read the whole as a bit more insidious. the ny post's initial response provides me my perspective. initially they said something along the lines that it was not intended as racist but rather used a current news story to illustrate the criticism of the bill.

let's look at the current news story used:

a crazed chimp ravages a suburban white woman and the only way to stop it is for the white cops to shoot it dead.

the author of the stimulus bill (obviously obama despite the ny posts protestations on this point , saying if it is anybody it is nancy pelosi) is ravaging our country and the only way to stop it is for law enforcement to shoot him dead.

couple this with the alan keyes rant and there is a pattern of conservatives calling for the death of the president or rebellion..

[tonguetied]

Oh gosh, you really think someone drew Obama as a monkey and published it in a newspaper as a way of calling for his death?
That seems like a huge, huge stretch to me and says more about you than anything.
No one is calling for anyone's death..some have called for the death of the stimulus bill and thankfully they didn't get it. That's about it. Let's focus on how this bill is going to help us..let's focus on the positive. The more people harp on something that didn't happen, the more negative this country gets...we don't need this...

[Tulka2]

It's all true: 1, 2, 3, and most especially 4.

[foxfan]

I stil think you are wrong. Also, why do so many say it is "obvious" when they mean it is what they think? I understand the offense once it was explained, but it was not obvious by any means.

[faith]

It was obvious. It was a directed attack on the president of the United States. The chimp had been killed by those in power - the two cops. All under the guise of protected speech per the 1st. A. Unfortunately, there was actual malice in the cartoon and it was aimed at our president. I cannot believe this is not a suit (recall that actual malice provides the mechanism to sue in matters that have soiled reputations of public persons.) or ciminal act as a symbolic speech hate crime. There is no excuse. And, the majority of Americans recognize it for exactly what it was. Unconscionable.

[tonguetied]

The president was neither portrayed nor referenced in the cartoon. He didn't write the bill.
I am concerned that people don't know who wrote the stimulus bill.

[breakfast kid]

I still can't buy that this cartoon was drawn with racist intentions. Look, I understand that "monkey" has been used in the past do offensively portray african americans, but the context in which this cartoon was drawn makes it appear more a reaction to a current event than a racist portrayal of a president. In fact, I think this cartoon is mostly a joke about the crazed chimp mauling in Connecticut, with the stimulus joke as a secondary reference. The cartoonist was most likely using a current event to express his thoughts on the stimulus bill, that "it's so crazy and nonsensical, it might as well have been written by a chimp" and NOT "barack obama is a stupid n-word that we should gun down because black people are bad." I think people are reading way too much into a comic that probably took an hour and a half to create, from conception to finished illustration.

I think people have been whipped up into a frenzy over this that isn't justified. And all this holier-than-thou attitude is old. I'm not a conservative or a republican, but I think a lot of you guys sound exactly like people who would comment on the drudge talkbacks or watch fox news. It's just that the opinions are reversed. But to suggest that someone should lose his job or go to jail for having an opinion that's different from yours is probably the most un-american thing you can say.

[Annette truth teller08]

"They are counting on the uneducated to put the Fire on this disgusting controversy out."

[demfriend]

Too many sides to the story and the placement of stupidity in the paper. But there is this too, when I sang a little song that used to be on a "CuriousGeorge" cartoon show to a black guy around 25 yrs he was insulted. I mean when "I'm a little monkey" sets someone off like I had called him the "N" word it was way over the top. I had nothingracial about what I was saying or "singing" as he had done something which had gone unnoticed and so it was a surprise to find out he was behind how it happened. Their was a woman whose kid has the "Curious George" monkey toy and books so she kind of saved me but the man still believes I am a racist. Far from it but still it doesn't help for others to spread this about the group I work with. Over reaction about the cartoon in the paper NO but the common sense of those who put it together as they did to challenge the stimulus package at the same time the chimp was killed was in poor form and the appology is another round of stupid from the paper. But as I show in my own experience to have anything I say about anyone who works with me now questions as being "racist" or a real statement about the person as they are not black or white comes into play. We need perspective here.

[Cybersquirt]

My money's on 4.

[GrainOSand]

Perhaps one can be racist and not know it. It does not matter for this image is nothing new nor the mindset behind it. In fact, it is a good thing this image came about because it is a reminder that for how ever far "we" have come, "we" still have a ways to go. Racist or not, the image is most unfortunate in choice and what it conjures in the mind. My thoughts are not pretty thoughts when I consider it. They finger through the rolodex of my memory hate, of feigned superiority, of lies, theft, rape, murder, systematic destruction of a people. That is what the image does for me. It says hate is alive and kicking it with the New York Post. You have to accept it to the degree you cannot defeat it. This sort of crap has existed for the longest time and it has been denied even longer.

[Gladys1963]

As someone who loves animals, I might point out that it's a chimpanzee, a member of the great ape family. It's not a monkey. However, neither species makes a good pet.

And I hope that the poor woman who awaits a new face doesn't know about any of this hullabaloo. She needs to heal. Maybe we all do.

[GrainOSand]

Maybe?

[Fudgefase]

Any word on her?

[rnelsonbrown]

'They're pointing out the enemy, to keep us deaf and blind
They want to sap our energy, incarcerate our minds' - Industrial Revolution, Dire Straits
The fat cats, the money hogs, work behind the scene
Crowding round the money trough as they gobble up the green - rnb!

If the monkey represents the stimulus package, then it should be labelled as such. Elementary cartooning, 101.
Sloppy cartoon? Clever ambiguity? Intentionally inflammatory? Who gives a monkey's uncle?

This is just the kind of thing to distract while strings are pulled, lives are changed, and pockets lined.
I wonder whose, (they're laughing all the way to the decreasingly viable banks)?

[toje]

Racist? Get real. The guy is a freakin' Monkeyist.
Get your victimization hyberbole right.