NY Post cartoon of Obama-chimp

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To create a piece of social commentary that is offensive to a large segment of the population without realizing it is offensive means you have no business writing published social commentary because you're an idiot. To realize it is offensive to that large segment and to publish it anyway means you're a jerk. To enjoy the negative reaction along racial lines because that was your "clever" intent all along means you are still a jerk, but a race-baiting, juvenile "too clever by half" jerk.

But as I said, this is the New York Post we're talking about here...so neither option would surprise me.

 

This, in my opinion, is by far the most likely interpretation. This man has made a living for years doing political cartoons, and he has thrived on controversy. He knew who he was going to offend when he made fun of Heather Mills for her amputation, he knew who he was going to offend when he compared gay marriage to sheep ****ing, and I simply cannot believe that he didn't know who he'd be offending here. He knew what he was doing, and he did it because he knew that the ensuing controversy would improve his bottom line.

 

Exactly.

 

Drew and Chandos - I agree. I was not familiar with his...herm, "body of work" before this incident. So it seems my inital interpretation was generous.

 

DR - It pleases me that you agree. Now I have the time to write more fully on this issue regarding the NY Post. I can tell you that someone is going to get the shaft at the Post over this. From my experience, even working as a student editor on a college newspaper, that this is not something that slipped through the cracks. I got screwed just like this, and it was my fault. I worked very hard on a story that I was writing on campus date rape. I did all the personal interviews with anyone willing to talk about it, and talked with all the security, health, psychology faculty, and did all the research so that it would be a well-written, well-documented piece.

After it went to the faculty to be approved for print, I was sitting in my cubical, flirting with one of the student reporters, when one of the faculty stuck his head in and asked me if the title he came up with for my story was OK (I very seldom ever titled my own pieces). Not really giving it any thought, because I was at a crucial stage in my flirting, I said, "Fine," hoping he would just go away and was only thinking with the wrong head (how ironic).

I won't even mention the title, since it was so freaking lame, sexist, and stupid. Once the story was printed, I had girls come up to the communications building just to tell me in person what a "sexist jerk" I was. And other departments wrote in to the paper to complain about me, even though everyone agreed that the piece itself was sympathetic and well-written, almost completely supporting the victims of campus date rape, but the title dismissed the whole problem as a non-issue.

My point is this, because I was responsible for most of the written student content of the paper, every few days I had my staff meeting with the faculty to discuss every piece that was to appear in print and if it was really how the paper wished to be viewed by the campus. Also, if all the pieces were fair and what were the potential pitfalls of how something could be misinterpreted, and thus putting the paper, and the college itself, in a bad light. It was serious stuff. So when I had my meeting with the faculty, I asked how they could come up with something so idiotic for my story. Of course the response, from the head of the department, was, "You approved it, so you own it." So basically, I was screwed. I never touched the editoral cartoons, advertising or anything like that, since there were separate editors for those areas, but I'm sure the editor responsible at the Post for approving that cartoon is competely screwed. It's his job to say "Yay, or Nay," and believe me he owns that "mistake."

 

It was the previous president who was the ape, not this one.

 

If the guys intention was to get as much publicity as possible then this thread has just done him a huge favour! People who'd never heard of him before are now talking about him

 

It is comments like this that almost make the cartoon worthwhile. Will Obama be immune to political satire as it will be branded racist? I am very curious about this. What if any satiric/offensive names for Obama will be allowed? I think of all of the Bush protests in which he was called Shrub, Chimp, Bushitler, etc.

Personally, I'm not 100% sure the cartoon was meant to be racist. Supposedly, there was an incident in CT on which it was based

 

That name for GWB was a title of a book by fellow Texan, the late Molly Ivins. While she was liberal, she knew the story pretty much first-hand because of how high-profile the Bush family has been in Texas. So the name, "Shrub" was not invented by protestors or Bush-whackers, although her book is hardly complimentary to GWB:

http://www.amazon.com/Shrub-Short-H...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235136633&sr=1-1

 

I'm not sure how that makes a difference. Isn't the point, why is it O.K. to make fun of previous Presidents (I'm including Slick Willie here also), but making fun of Obama seems to be verboten.

 

While I myself wouldn't make monkey jokes about Obama, I think that it's fair game. People mocked Ford for his clumsiness, Reagan for his forgetfulness, Clinton for his horniness, and Bush II for his stupidness (I'm sticking with the -ness theme here). All of America cheered when Falwell was mocked by Flynt in the entire "humping my mother in an outhouse" incident, and in fact a movie was made making Flynt out to be some kind of heroic defender of free speech for his repulsive parody. And now we're all of a sudden getting bent out of shape because the high and holy Obama is being parodied and ribbed? Please.

I can understand the Post firing someone if they don't want that kind of material published in their paper -- it's not Hustler, after all. But to afford Obama extra protection -- when there's a long American history (much longer than the one I delineated here) of poking fun at the President or other people in the public eye -- is crap logic.

Don't get me wrong -- the cartoon is in very bad taste. But making the cartoonist out to be some sort of criminal is too far.

 

I don't think it is forbidden to make fun of Obama. I think it is universally accepted that it is not OK to make fun of someone because of their race. I think that's true regardless of whether the person we are talking about sits in the Oval Office or cleans the Oval Office. I know that you do not feel that the cartoon was meant to be racist, but many people have interpreted it that way, and I don't think it takes a great deal of "reading into" to come to that conclusion. So I think the problem here is not that Obama was made fun of, but that he was compared to a monkey - which has serious racial overtones when the person in question is black.

I'm a fan of the show Real Time with Bill Maher. Maher is basically a comedian, but his show is very political, and he is very liberal (although more socially libertarian). Throughout the past year he made fun of Bush the most, but he also poked fun at Hillary, McCain and Obama during the primaries. It just so happens that tonight is his first new show of 2009, and thus also the first time he has done a live show since Obama took office. Not only would I not be surprised, but I fully expect that he WILL make fun of Obama tonight. If you are a political satirist (which is essentially what a comedian who deals with politics is), then your job is to make fun of the top politicians in power, and the top guy is Obama. What I do NOT expect is for him to make a joke comparing Obama to a monkey.

EDIT:

Sorry for the edit, but LKD's post showed up while I was typing. I agree with this point he makes - the cartoon can be considered offensive, but I do not think the cartoonist committed any type of crime by drawing it.

 

Oh come on, quit the hedging. Of course it was racist.

That incident? A welcome opportunity.

I have read people saying that that sort of joke would have been funny fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, when the US had segregation? Right. Obviously a hell of a joke then. It is not funny now and a similar joke about blacks fifty years ago wouldn't have been funny. So what is it that makes idiotic comparisons of Blacks to animal primates amusing or acceptable as humour?

Thesis: As long as, or because, it hits the other party?

 

I think the point that I and others have been making is that comparisons of blacks to monkeys is NOT acceptable as humor. The history of race relations, especially between blacks and whites is different in the US. I understand that Europe is not some homogeneous collection of white people with blonde hair and blue eyes, and that the strains of racial tension are present there as well. However, Europeans do not have a history where one race of people held another race of people as slaves, and especially not as recently as 150 years ago. Europeans also do not have a history of institutionalized segregation and Jim Crow laws as recently as 50 years ago.

Race was and is still the third rail both socailly and politically in American society. 99% of the time when someone talks about race, it is not done in polite company. To think something like this is simply done becaues it hits the other party completely understates the issue. I don't mean for this to sound insulting Rags, but I just have to say this as bluntly as possible: I think your thesis is incorrect, and if you think that way, you just don't get it in regards to American society. (Which I suppose isn't surprising, given that you're not an American. I'm sure there are many aspects of European society that I don't get.)

 

I'm more of a "if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander" type. I'm not out to rip on Democrats (in fact as I said before, I'd have voted for Obama were I an American) or Republicans. But for the last 8 years the left has had a heyday and made all sorts of jibes at the expense of Republicans in the limelight. More power to them , I say. But if their criticisms and parodies are sacrosanct, then the criticisms and parodies of the Republicans should also be sacrosanct. Yeah, it's racist, but many cartoons are sexist, religiously bigoted, elitist and lots of other things. That doesn't mean we call the cartoonists criminals. It DOES mean that if the cartoonists work results in lower circulation for the paper he works for, then he shouldn't be surprised if he is shown the door by management on a cost-benefit basis.

But it is the height of hypocrisy for people who enjoyed tasteless cartoons lambasting Bush to now start calling for this cartoonist's head just because the shoe is on the other foot. If you can dish it out, you'd damn well better be able to take it.

 

The point I was trying to make earlier was that it depends on the paper's mission and agenda. I'm sure there are papers that don't give a flip about how it is seen in some areas (like say sexism - do you think Larry Flint would lose sleep over that?), but if the paper does not want to have racism as a part of its mission, or be seen as a racist publication, the editor that OKd it would be held accountable for putting the paper in a bad light.

And as Drew pointed out, it could be a ploy by Rubert and his editors to stir up some controversy in order to get a short term boost in sales. In that case, all the protests in the world won't be able to change a thing. But many on the outside of this will see the Post as not just anti-Obama, but as a possible racist publication. And I think that will hurt the Post in the long run.

LKD - It won't be the cartoonist as much as the editor over that area of the Post, who will more than likely be held accountable. But with Rubert there is no telling.

 

No. Just...no. Attacking Bush in a cartoon for his verbal gaffes, his anti-intellectualism, or his outright dishonesty about the Iraq war is a far cry from invoking a racial epithet in a cartoon attacking Obama. If my contention that the cartoonist knew damn well how his cartoon would be interpreted is true, then he was intentionally race-baiting.

Attack Obama for his policies, for his youth, his idealism, his Shatner-esque speech mannerisms (I can't be the only guy who's noticed this) -- there's plenty of stuff to choose from -- but for the love of God, it's 2009. Invoking a racial epithet or phrasing a statement in a manner that directly implies one is well beyond the limits of good taste, regardless of your political orientation. I wouldn't stand for such "humor" if the target was Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice, either.

 

I personally find it offensive that cartoonists keep drawing Obama with big ears. Dammit, that was Bush's trademark on the editorial page. If these cartoonists can't even come up with a new trademark they should be fired.

On a more serious note....

I also didn't think the chimp cartoonist was comparing Obama to a monkey -- only that the stimulus package could have been written by one (as pointed out in an earlier thread Obama didn't actually write the thing). I did feel it was in extremely bad taste to both use such a tragic event as the butt of his joke and to use a chimp when referring to Obama in any way. The cartoonist is either stupid for not thinking it was a racial slight or just flat-out meant to cause a racial incident.

For those who may not be familiar with certain parts of US history, black men and women were often depicted in US comics and editorial cartoons with elongated arms and an ape-like stature. Such comics were always derogatory and painted black men and women as being incredibly stupid. Kids were called (and sometimes still are) "monkey-boy" or "monkey-girl" in very harsh tones. The racial undertones are deeply rooted.

 

Yes, that was what 'makaka' was all about and it is still valid.

 

Yes, but Obama actually has them, plus, they stick out! Has anyone else ever noticed this?

Ok, I see two problems with this cartoon. One, it presents a black man as a monkey which, intended as a race reference or not, was a race reference to many, many Americans even today. Two, it presents a very violent action being directed at the president, namely, being shot.

Lampooning the president is a long-held tradition in America, and one I think we're proud of, but there should still be a certain level of respect for the office, whether you respect the man or not. Cartoons depicting the president being shot, hung, stabbed, burned, or otherwise violently ended will always be in poor taste. Wanna make fun of his ears, the way he 'tawks', that bill he just signed, or his relationships with his wive and co-workers? That's all fair game.