So the NY Post ran this cartoon today (also under the cut) and all I have to say is c’mon seriously?
seriously?
Okay I lied that wasn’t all I had to say. This is in such bad taste it’s astounding. I can come to only two conclussions about this a) it’s completely and horrendously racist or b) the cartoonist is absolutely oblivious to the connotations of the image. This also isn’t the first time that Obama has been likened to a monkey.
I suppose the monkey could, if we’re playing devil’s advocate here, be in reference to Congress and not Obama since they are the ones who technically wrote the Stimulus Bill but that ignores the fact that Obama has been the face of this bill and that it’s basically been referred to as his baby in the media for the past few weeks. If this were the case it’s also just bad cartooning (?) to not label the monkey as such and a far more appropriate animal in that case would have also been a donkey.
I’m going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt here and assume he meant Congress and is trying to latch onto the news story of the Chimp mauling a few days ago, but I mean really even if that’s the case this shows an amazing lack of insensitivity and obliviousness on both the parts of the cartoonist, who I can imagine just had a brain fart and didn’t put two and two together, and the editorial staff at the NY Post who really should have caught this before they published it. I’m flabbergasted that this actually managed to make it to print.