Is This New York Post Cartoon Out of Line? St. Louis Weighs In

Er...

Being as the President didn't write a single word of the stimulus bill, that particular manufactured outrage is a harder sell.

Now if Nancy Polosi or Harry Reid can find something beyond a criticism of their bill or the all-fire haste that went into it's passage... I'll listen to their grievances.

Okay, that's a lie. I won't listen to their grievances either.

(BTW: Who writes these crazy word verification words? "Foiegras?" "Medium-haul?")

It's kinda crappy, but I certainly don't take offense to it. I just don't think it's a good joke.

I agree with Steph. Someone is going to be offended every time there is a new political sketch. I think he could have been smarter in making his point.

I agree w/ Margo and Steph too.

We can only assume that the artist had no racist intentions. Most Americans know that Obama did not write or create the stimulus package. Just making a big deal out of nothing...


BTW My captha was "talks good" in all ironic glory.

I don't think it's racist, poor taste or anything else. I think that once again, a few people have over-thought and over-analyzed something as simple as a freaking cartoon. I'm sure it's not the first time a president has been likened to an animal.

I follow the news as thoroughly as I can, and when I saw that image I didn't think it was funny or clever or even that it made much sense. It was the simplest path between two headlines. The artist connected the unrelated dots and tried to make a funny. On that count, it was a miss in my book. Ho-hum, another news day.

If only it were that simple.

Contrary to Doctorsound's opinion, I'd argue that the majority of American's do NOT realize how little the President has to do with the writing of these sorts of things. I mean, really? We've all seen the funny "people say the damndest things" tv-shows, we've seen exit-poll interviews, and most of us have probably had conversations with people who we think are intelligent only to find out just how uneducated they are on the topic of politics and policy. Do you really honestly believe the majority of America has that sort of grasp on the going's on in Washington? They should, no argument there, but they don't. I'd suggest that for most of America, The face of this stimulus package was very much our black President, not the person(s) who sat down to a blank piece of paper and started writing.

So the cartoon...

Two white agents of social control (i.e. "the Man" for our Springer fans out there) with a smoking gun standing over a bullet-ridden chimp insinuating that the chimp (or at least A chimp) wrote the Stimulus package (that most of America identifies as Obama's baby).

Now I'll be the first person to call out Sharpton as a total NTAC, but to dismiss the notion that there were any racial undercurrents in that image is to accept that you are incapable of understanding the subtleties of perspective. Regardless of whether or not you ever called a black person a chimp (or "porch-monkey") doesn't mean they haven't had to deal with that legacy, both in direct association and indirect assessment as lesser beings, as a fundamental part of their American experience. Even if you never felt like the very system of this country from the white house to the beat-cop was aligned against your freedom and happiness doesn't mean that no one has, particularly our black countrymen.

Any kind of media has only two actors, the creators and the consumers. The creators bring their perspective to it just like the consumers do and it's that moment of contact that determines it's worth. Some media warrants analysis because the breadth of perspective on both sides of requires a deeper understanding of context and contact. Political Cartoons, however, are like headlines in that they are designed for maximum impact with minimal investment. Having to read very far into a cartoon to determine the degree of it's offensiveness means it's already too late. And it doesn't matter if the artist thought it was racist or had questionable intentions because if he didn't then it only speaks to a level of acceptance for those sorts of things that are unacceptable to some, pointing to a systemic problem that some people will never have the opportunity to understand while others never have the opportunity to escape.

If you weren't offended, great. I for one am not surprised.

But that doesn't effect the legitimacy of someone else's differing perspective. That would be like saying, "Hey Black People, White people say this cartoon isn't offensive so you can all calm down (and get to the back of the bus)."

I thought it was really offensive at first, but just read into it too far. It's true that with every comment, every cartoon, people will be offended. That's the way you make headlines, right? This cartoon did. I just watched this whole video about ithttp://www.newsy.com/videos/firestorm_over_editorial_cartoon/

Respectfully, PJ, without edging us into flame war territory...

"Bunk."

When you let white guilt twist reason to it's breaking point to make some kind of emotional concession to fragile idiots, then you only fuel the idiots.

Our society used to apply the "standard of a reasonable person."

Now we apply the "standard of the most fragile, hyper sensitive idiot in the room."

When you stand on your head to accommodate the logic and champion the delusions of the hyper sensitive, then you become an apologist and an enabler for the idiots.

I encourage you to call B.S. when you know it's B.S.

Following your line of logic is how a sports commentator gets fired for using the word "niggardly."

Following your line of logic is why the Southwest Airlines passenger thought she had a case when the Flight Attendant said, "Einey Meeny Miney Moe, grab a seat, we gotta go!"

Following your line of logic we get a ridiculous percentage of the world who think Palestinians have some kind of inalienable right to fire mortars into Israel.



When you stop enabling the hypersensitive professional victims, reason will have a chance to prevail.

Please. Just call B.S. on the B.S.ers. Suck the oxygen out of the victim-class echo chamber until they figure out they are only talking to themselves.

I don't live in the world of the victim class. They live in my world of common sense.

"Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival." ~ Rene Dubos