Looks like we will be playing this game for at least the next 4 years. The NY Post published this pictures recently and people are up in arms, including the Reverend Al Sharpton, who called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys."
I have to admit, I am sometimes blind to racism, inasmuch as i don't look for it around every corner and behind every action. Until Rev. Al mentioned it, I just saw this cartoon as a play on the old saying about if you get enough monkeys in a room with tipewriters, one of them will write Shakespeare. I saw the cartoon as a comment on the monkeys in Congress, not as a reference to Obama.
I have said it before and I will say it again,we are going to have to start letting shit go, black people. We cannot continue to see the world only through the prism of our own real and imagined pain. I don't want to live in a world where everyone is on such eggshells about offending someone that public discourse dies.
Rev. Al, foul ball (ooo, look at me with the sports reference. How butch!)
That said, I am more offended by the use of the monkey as a joke. It is not AT ALL funny what happened to that woman when that chimp jumped on her. That animal belonged in a zoo and his owner should be facing some serious charges. She keeps referring to the chimp as her son and herself as its Mom. I always find people who anthropo-morphize their pets to be a little wierd and this takes the cake.
NY Post, that's a strike for extremely poor taste.
3 comments:
I agree. It is always and will forever be the recipient of communication who acknowledges, receives, and deciphers any message given to him. Some will see this cartoon and decipher than the monkey is symbolic merely of the politician. Take myself for example...I just can't get past the size of the man's ears.
The problem with this cartoon, however, I will point out, is the fact that politicians aren't usually shot and killed by police. There is a look of shock on the officer's face, and a statement that regarding the stimulus bill. Police brutality and "accidental" racial profiling is why this is an insult - it's a sarcastic stab. But consider this...
You can dress a monkey up in a suit and put him at a desk, and yes, it is still a monkey. But a pig in a dress with lipstick - or in a uniform with a badge and gun - is still just a pig.
I live in South Carolina and I expect to read some insensitive comic strip any time I open a newspaper around here. The New York Post has leveled the field with this one. I am aware each day of my life that this kind of mentality exist in SC. I have a dumb as hell governor and super dumb as hell US senator, and either one of them could have wrote that strip. No wake-up call needed here. Obama handle your business and damn the rest.
The NY Post is a notorious,Rupert Murdoch,(FOX NEWS,et al)right wing rag,and this particular cartoonist is famous for crossing any line he can.He's a well known racist,ultra right scumbag.Been called out on the carpet before for blatantly racist cartoons.Believe me,they knew what they were doing when they published this.Controversy sells papers folks.
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