Posted on 02/19/2009 7:29:46 AM PST by MindBender26
Artist Says Slain Animal Was Not Meant to Be Obama
An editorial cartoon in Wednesday's New York Post that some say compares President Obama to a chimpanzee is being denounced as insensitive at best and racist at worst. The cartoonist denied he had Obama in mind.
The cartoon, drawn for the Page Six section by Sean Delonas, who has been criticized for previous work, shows two policemen, one with a smoking gun, looking at a dead chimpanzee. One says, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
The chimpanzee reference is to a 200-pound chimp that went berserk Monday in Stamford, Conn., and was shot by a police officer after attacking a woman.
"Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?" the Rev. Al Sharpton, a previous target of Delonas, said in a statement.
"Of course it's referring to the recent rogue chimp," wrote a reader to the Gawker Web site. "But the joke — such as it is — is based entirely on: '. . . and, hey, the president is one of them monkeys too!'
"How on God's white earth is that not racist . . .?"
Gawker ran an item about the cartoon under a "Black History Month" label.
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. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist," Karen Matthews reported for the Associated Press.
Delonas added in a statement to CNN that the controversy was "absolutely friggin' ridiculous."
"Do you really think I'm saying Obama should be shot? I didn't see that in the cartoon," Delonas said his brief comment, read by anchor Kyra Phillips on "CNN Newsroom." "It's about the economic stimulus bill. If you're going to make that about anybody, it would be [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, which it's not."
But Rafael Olmeda, president of Unity: Journalists of Color, speaking of the cartoon, told Journal-isms, "It's as politically insensitive and tone-deaf as anything I've ever seen. Any legitimate political point being made is erased by the racist imagery, whether intended or not."
Later, in a statement from Unity, Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and vice president of Unity, said, "I question the judgment of the editorial editors to move this to print as well as the diversity of its staff that would let them think this passes as comedy."
In their "City Room" blog, Sewell Chan and Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times quoted newly appointed Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and several academics calling the cartoon racist.
New York Gov. David Paterson, an African American, said, "'It would be very important for the New York Post to explain what the cartoon was intended to portray."
"A newsroom employee at The Post, who spoke on condition of anonymity because employees were not permitted to comment on the matter, said its newsroom received many calls of complaints on Wednesday morning after the publication of the cartoon. 'Every line was lit up for several hours,' the employee said. 'The phones on the city desk have never rung like that before.'" the Times story said.
Sharpton said he planned to hold a protest outside the Post’s Midtown offices at noon on Thursday.
"How do you think the Jewish community would feel about the use of rats in any depiction of them?" Gary A. Ramsay and Zachary Dowdy of the New York Association of Black Journalists said in a statement.
"How do you think the Italian community would feel about being generalized with mobsters? Monkey slurs against Africans and African Americans go back to the days of early colonialism, when Anglo Saxon, Spanish and Portuguese conquerors used these types of drawings and descriptions to dehumanize black people so that their mistreatment and enslavement would not be viewed as wrong or sinful. The practice also took on more sinister roles later in history including during the slave trade here in the U.S. and in Hitler’s Nazi Germany."
They called for an apology and explanation from the cartoonist and said the incident underscored the need for more black-owned media.
Phillips said on CNN that the cartoon "got us talking this morning. I even looked around to my group in the morning meeting, and in particular, African American members of my team. And I said, 'do you actually remember how that correlation between blacks and monkeys started?'
"And my EP [executive producer] actually found this, and I want to read it to you. It's actually a text, which would be considered junk science — it is — written back in 1867. It was called, 'The Negro: What is his Ethnological Status.'
"And this reverend, Buckner Payne of Nashville, Tenn., writes, this is how he breaks it down scientifically. He says, 'We take up the monkey, and trace him . . . through his upward and advancing orders — baboon, ourang-outang, and gorilla, up to the negro, another animal, that noblest of the beast creation. The difference between these higher orders of the monkey and negro is very slight and consists mainly of this one thing: the negro can utter sounds that can be imitated; hence, he could talk with Adam and Eve, for they could imitate his sounds.'"
"We live in a new age," media critic Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times wrote on his blog. "We have a black president and a woman came within a few hundred primary votes of snagging the job, too. And jokes which might have rolled off the back of a typical politician now take on new resonance when levied against someone from a race of people who were stereotyped as [apish] animals for hundreds of years.
"Frankly, I doubt the Post was smart enough to craft such a ham-handed cartoon to serve such a subtle agenda. I think, instead, they made an awful joke that had a resonance beyond what they planned — a lesson, perhaps, in jumping too gleefully on the train of in-your-face parody."
Among the cartoons for which Delonas has been criticized was one last year portraying longtime (Black( WNBC-TV anchor Sue Simmons. The Post claimed that Simmons used to head to a bar between the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. broadcasts and get tipsy. She denied the story. "Luckily, the tabloid's eternally polite cartoonist Sean Delonas doesn't let silly things like denials get in the way of his art," New York Magazine wrote then, showing the cartoon.
Ever since the election of Obama, they have experienced a dearth of things to complain about.
Since all the Obama tax-cheating cabinet appointments were White, there was no way they could complain that they should be confirmed because "we Black folks don't know nothin' 'bout doin' no taxes, Miz Scarlett!"
"Oh Happy Day. We have been dissed. Give us another $100 million!"
I predicted this yesterday when the original thread came up.
Pelosi wrote the bill...sheeesh people are idiots today....
The only group offended should be chimpanzees who can write a better legislation than the amateurs in Obozo’s WH or Congress.
The publication of this really tasteless cartoon has only gave, so to speak, aid and comfort to our enemies - the race pimps. We should ask ourselves, why did the editor allow this cartoon to be published? It only takes more MSM air time away from opportunities to point out the malfeasance in the Porkulus package and focus unnecessarily on this insipid cartoon. I await with baited breathe Kathleen Parker’s article this week lecturing us “racists”.
Why did the editor allow it to be published? The stimulus was passed already, it only enflamed the passions of the willfully ignorant.
So from now on comedians have to have an explanation after each joke they tell? Some people just don’t get it...never did and never will.
whinewhinewhine...
These people are about as credible as the Gieco caveman.
For criminie’s sake, get over it.
Good! If they get a little more deranged they will be in straight jackets and unable to vote.
Your point is correct.The cartoonist may have wanted to open
a dialogue about race with Holder and show how onesided the
dialogue is.
Firstly, the irony of THAT statement is lost only on the idiot that said it.
Secondly, in what universe do you put a question mark after an elipsies?
“How do you think the Jewish community would feel about the use of rats in any depiction of them?” Gary A. Ramsay and Zachary Dowdy of the New York Association of Black Journalists said in a statement.”
*******
It’s not about a “community”, it’s about some individual (whether it be 0, SanFranNan or whomever and the joke made that clear) and that the author of Porkulus displays about as much sense and is ultimately as dangerous a jacked-up 200 lb chimp.
These people need to get a life.
Glenn Beck had a piece about the ‘honor killing’ on his Fox News show yesterday.
When the “stimulus” spending fails these are the first ones who will claim that it was NOT OBama’s bill.
EXACTLY! And that’s what the cartoon was intended to say: a well trained chimp could write a better bill. Seems to me that’s a recognized and oft-used put-down that has absolutely zilch to do with race. As to the “tone-deaf” quote, that depends on whether you acknowledge the tune, doesn’t it?
Colonel, USAFR
As I recall....the whack left made a movie about the assassination of George Bush!...
When will the poverty pimp Jesse Hijackson show up?
I seem to remember the left repeatedly referring to President Bush as a chimp.
Hm. No outrage then. Hm. And no media coverage about it either. Hm.
So..the race pimps are back to their old monkey business already. Somehow I knew Sharpton and his ilk would go ape over this.
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