NY Post cartoonist under fire for portraying stimulus author as a dead chimp.

woody60707

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Today, the NY Post published a cartoon by Sean Delonas showing two police officers shooting a chimpanzee, in a reference to the recent incident in Connecticut where a pet chimp attacked a woman. In this cartoon, however, one of the policemen says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” rest in spoils or click the link.
Spoiler :
In a statement, the Rev. Al Sharpton questions the racism that appears to be in Delonas’s cartoon:

The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that “Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

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?

UpdateThe NY Post editor-in-chief Col Allan responds:

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.

UpdateThe New York Times reports on the reaction by Gov. David Paterson (D-NY):

“It would be very important for The New York Post to explain what the cartoon was intended to portray,” Mr. Paterson said in response to a question about whether the cartoon’s depiction of a monkey was racist, as Mr. Sharpton has suggested. “Obviously those types of associations have been made. They do feed a kind of negative and stereotypical way that people think. But I think if it’s enough that people are raising this issue, I hope they would clarify.”

Many NY Post staff members were also reportedly dismayed by the cartoon, and the paper's phone lines were ringing non-stop.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/18/nypost-chimp/

I think it's silly thing to get upset about. Either Sharpton is just a opportunist, or somehow this is the most important pressing race issue for him to take his time on. <----it's not
 
Seeing that Sharpton is clearly not alone in interpreting it this way, I don't see how you can blame him.

From a link from your own URL:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/chimp-stimulus-cartoon-raises-racism-concerns/

Updated, 5:01 p.m. | Gov. David A. Paterson, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, the Rev. Al Sharpton and others expressed concern on Wednesday morning over an editorial cartoon in The New York Post that showed a police officer telling his colleague who just shot a chimpanzee, &#8220;They&#8217;ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.&#8221;

Critics said the cartoon, drawn by Sean Delonas, 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, Conn., on Monday evening, after it mauled a friend of his owner.

Speaking at a conference of the New York Academy of Medicine on Wednesday morning, Mr. Paterson said that while he had not seen the cartoon, he believed that The Post should explain it. Given the possibility that some people could conclude the cartoon had a racial subtext, Mr. Paterson said the newspaper needed to clarify its meaning.

&#8220;It would be very important for The New York Post to explain what the cartoon was intended to portray,&#8221; Mr. Paterson said in response to a question about whether the cartoon&#8217;s depiction of a monkey was racist, as Mr. Sharpton has suggested. &#8220;Obviously those types of associations have been made. They do feed a kind of negative and stereotypical way that people think. But I think if it&#8217;s enough that people are raising this issue, I hope they would clarify.&#8221;

Senator Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said in a statement: &#8220;I found the Post cartoon offensive and purposefully hurtful. This type of cartoon serves no productive role in the public discourse.&#8221;

City Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr., a Queens Democrat, called for a boycott of the newspaper. &#8220;To run such a violent, racist cartoon is an insult to all New Yorkers,&#8221; he said in a statement. &#8220;This was an unfortunate incident in which a human being was seriously injured- not an opportunity to sling dangerous rhetoric. It is my belief that The New York Post owes an immediate apology to this city for demonstrating such terrible judgment and insensitivity.&#8221;

Mr. Comrie urged New Yorkers to &#8220;demonstrate their displeasure with the New York Post by writing letters to their advertisers and simply stop purchasing a publication that clearly has no respect or sensitivity for people of color.&#8221;

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. &#8220;Every line was lit up for several hours,&#8221; the employee said. &#8220;The phones on the city desk have never rung like that before.&#8221; Many Post staff members were dismayed by the cartoon, the employee added.

A 2001 cartoon by Mr. Delonas depicted Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president who was seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor that year, kissing the buttocks of Mr. Sharpton &#8212; a depiction that was widely criticized as demeaning, and even racist.

Mr. Delonas has drawn ire from a number of groups for past cartoons in The Post. In 2006, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation denounced a cartoon of his that showed a man carrying a sheep wearing a bridal veil to a &#8220;New Jersey Marriage Licenses&#8221; window, a reference to the State Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling that year requiring the state to grant same-sex couples the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples through civil unions.

Andrew Rojecki, associate professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-author of &#8220;The Black Image in the White Mind&#8221; (University of Chicago Press, 2000), a study of racial attitudes and their relationship to mass media content, said he found the cartoon deeply troubling.

&#8220;Of course I would say it&#8217;s racist,&#8221; Professor Rojecki said in an interview. &#8220;There&#8217;s no question about it.&#8221;
 
House and senate staffers along with WH staffers wrote the bill. This is way over reacting. It just means the bill is dumb, ie written by a monkey. Calm down leftys
 
Sharpton is a complete douchebag, it's not even worth wasting the time and effort to talk about what he thinks anymore. As to the cartoon, there's got to be a bazzillion images of George W. Bush being compared to chimps, and it's quite possible that the author was more or less calling Obama an idiot by comparing him to a monkey. It's hard to say if it's racist or not without talking to the cartoonist who drew it and finding out his motivations.
 
House and senate staffers along with WH staffers wrote the bill. This is way over reacting. It just means the bill is dumb, ie written by a monkey. Calm down leftys

This is what I thought as well... when I say "person X is a chimp (or baboon, or whatever non-human primate)" I mean that said person is stupid, not that he is black. It is perfectly applicable to people of all ethnic backgrounds.
 
Well Sharpton has to justify his relevance now.
 
This is only happening cause Bush is no longer in charge. If he was the president no one wonder blink over stuff like this.
 
This is only happening cause Bush is no longer in charge. If he was the president no one wonder blink over stuff like this.

No, the joke would of been funny then. Now it's just blah.
 
No, the joke would of been funny then. Now it's just blah.

Okay they do that but I still stand no one would really care that Bush was called a chimp.
 
No, the joke would of been funny then. Now it's just blah.

It still wouldn't have been funny. Bush jokes had become synonymous with Chuck Norris jokes and funny Budweiser adverts from 1998.
 
Did Obama write the bill?
The cop is intimating that the bill was going to be written by that dead chimp.

How can this cartoon possibly be saying that Obama is a chimp? The chimp is obviously Congress in this cartoon.
 
It's his stimulus plan.
 
Oh I thought it was common knowledge that Congress wrote the stimulus bill, which is how the cop phrased it.

Not to mention, if Congress is the dead chimp, this political cartoon parody makes a lot more sense. Obama being the chimp makes no sense.
 
Yeah. I'm sure the President of the United States had nothing to say about his own stimulus package. :rolleyes:
 
I'm pretty sure that BHO knows that in this cartoon, Congress is the chimp. Just me and BHO, I guess, oh and the writer of it.
 
:shake: I'm so sick of rasist cartoonists :(
 
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