NY Post cartoon of Obama-chimp

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Wow, I never expected anything like this...

That is really really bad. Africans are just as much 'monkeys' as any other human sub-species, with Europeans being the most 'ape-like', what with our white skin just like other mammals and all.

NY Post cartoon of Obama-chimp stirs outrage

 

What a load of male dangly bits! It's got nothing to do with race, it looks to me like it's more to do with Obama being well trained by his puppet masters or something.

Political Correctness is getting way out of hand now!

 

But its still bad taste no matter what the motives were or what the implications were meant to be.

 

Is it bad taste if it's political? hmmm...

 

Not in the least, actually. There are two possible interpretations, and neither one has anything to do with Obama being a puppet. Either Obama is being compared to a chimp, or the artist is saying that the bailout is so poorly written, it may as well have been written by apes (in which case, he did quite a bad job). As much as I'd like to say that Sean Delonas meant to imply the latter interpretation, a brief look at some of the other cartoons he published causes me to question whether that is in fact his intent. This is, after all, the same guy that made fun of Heather Mills for having only one leg and compared gay couples seeking marriage licenses to people who have sex with sheep. He isn't exactly known for being tasteful or tactful. Or funny.

I'm betting he was intending to provoke controversy by phrasing and drawing things the way he did, taking full advantage of the plausible deniability provided by the more benign possible interpretation. In other words, I think the double entendre was intentional. Controversy, after all, sells.

 

I have to agree with Drew on this, sorry deary

The cartoons concerning homosexuals is abhorrent, I am definitely not a sheep lover in that sense, and if I decide to marry a man then I dont want to be compared to loving sheep. Also, his cartoons about Jessica Simpson and Heather Mills is just bad bad taste.

 

I've never seen any of his other stuff so I can only go on face value. IMO it's not that offensive and if he's trying to be offensive than he's just making himself look daft

 

Im pretty sure 'daft' is his middle name.

 

I doubt he'll care too terribly much about looking daft when his circulation goes up and he goes on the talk-show circuit. Like I said, controversy sells.

 

@Silvery - perhaps being from across the pond, you aren't aware that in the not too distant past in the US, referring to an African American as a monkey/chimp/gorilla etc, was a very common way of insulting them. Next to the N-word, it was one of the more inflammatory insults. So when you compare a black president to the chimp, it's hard (at least for Americans) to view it as anything other than a racist insult.

 

That's a really dumb insult. Most of the black people I know would find that hilarious!

 

I doubt it's only in the US. I remember several cases where football (soccer) fans insulted black (African-born) players on the opposing teams by calling them monkeys, and we haven't even had slavery here - or at least, not one where we were doing the slave-owning.

Anyway, I saw the cartoon... It was rather tasteless either way but not quite clear. My first interpretation was that the act was written by a chimp, but I imagine people may interpret it in another way. Actually, the chimp reminded me a bit of the former president

 

It isnt only applied to Africans or African Americans. It is not uncommon for racists to call Maori and Pacific Islanders 'monkey' here.

 

The problem is that Dubya was very often and to quite humoursly compared and drawn as a chimp and if you can do it with one president why not the other? Obama looks at least as much as a chimp as Bush. Now I am well aware of the racial connotations and all that but I have been waiting for this and the inevitable cries of "hypocrite!" when someone points out that it is not very appropriate to draw a black man as a chimp.

 

Well, the difference is that calling Bush a chimp is a slight on his intelligence. Calling Obama a chimp is a slight on his race.

 

I think that the chimp comparison is in really, really bad taste. But Drew said it perfectly: "controversy sells."

There's lots of things I find in bad taste, though. I just grin and move on after I've expressed my feelings on it, though. It may be racist, it may be bigoted, it may show a lack of respect for something I believe should be shown a great deal of respect, but I also respect the right of Free Speech, and therefore have concerns when groups, even well intentioned groups, seek to stifle the expression of others though the legal system. I don't think that's happening here yet, but it could.

 

I have to agree with BTA and Silvery here. It though it was just criticizing the plan. The analogy to me wasn't "Obama - Monkey", but rather "Monkeys at typewriters".

 

I see this cartoon as a combination of two stories: using a recent news story citing the shooting of a violent chimpanzee by Connecticut zookeepers as a humorous means of critique of Washington's often bumbling inner workings (vis-a-vis, the stimulus bill). I really don't think the author had any racist intent.

Having said that - he's an idiot not to have seen how it would be interpreted, and should have used a little common sense and judgment (or at the very least, run it by a few people for reactions, as is common practice). It's easy to see why people would get miffed about it. Especially considering it came from the New York Post and who owns it.

 

DR - What if the guy is not an idiot, but actually very clever. Then how do you see it?