Thread: Cartoon Said to Link Obama to Dead Chimp

The cartoon, according to the author, was aimed at Nancy Pelosi, not Obama.

However, here's the connection: the cartoon mentions the stimulus package, which it Obama's first big project as President. For a lot of people the Stimulus bill is synonymous with the President right now.

If the cartoon had nothing to do with Obama, why throw that line in? It would make no sense otherwise. Very fishy indeed.

So we're left with, either the monkey is Pelosi, or it's Obama. Whether or not it was intended to be racist, I found it very offensive to allude to a person being assassinated.

What troubles and disappoints me is the call from people on "my side"--the liberal side--of this issue to end debate and nail someone to a cross. Some charge of "insensitivity" may be warranted; it was insensitive treatment of the chimp episode, certainly, and I suspect someone made the judgment call that, "Some people will try to see this as being about Obama, but it's not, so that's their problem." By "some people" I don't mean black people, but more like the Times, Keith Olberman and Al Sharpton.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the cartoonist and editorial staff are covert racists. If that's the case, however, we're not talking about "Hello black college student, are you on the football team?" racism. If there is any racial subtext in this cartoon, it's that our president comes from a violent, erratic, apelike people and should be shot down rather than allowed to govern. Coming from a rural, overwhelmingly white, cantankerous part of this nation, I'm familiar with a pretty wide spectrum of racism, but a statement like that would be beyond the pale in any PA biker bar: can anyone seriously assert that it's the editorial position of the NYPost?

Originally Posted by O

Again, I don't doubt this at all. And I'm no stranger to how easily the pitchforks are taken up, in arms, against such content. (I've taken this same neutral position with a few of my family members, about this topic, and was met with a whole lot of opposition on it. Heh.) But there is another side to this covert racism that must be addressed just as openly. Just as there is the biasedly(word?) damning side, there is the biasedly forgiving side. Just as RB said "I guess someone who had been a victim of racism would naturally be more sensitive to such things", the inverse is also true. Someone whose "side" of the argument is constantly the one being demonized (in this case, whites) might naturally be more likely to see the innocence in such an ambiguous cartoon. There are those who are sensitive to "their kind" being discriminated against, and there are those who are sensitive to "their kind" being blamed for discrimination - both, at times, to a fault.

I'm pretty confident in my race-dar; I've spent my life calling out white people and, often enough, black people for saying stupid, insulting things regarding other races or their own. Nice, liberal, middle-class people of varied ethnic derivation routinely insult my own heritage to my face, tossing around stereotypes virtually identical to those applied to black Americans and dropping epithets like "trash," "white trash," and "redneck" like the time of day, without realizing they're talking to one of "those people."

I do see where you're coming from, I'm just seeing a much stronger knee-jerk reaction among those inclined to demonize the cartoon than among those inclined to give it a pass, and I think it's necessary to confront both sides and get people to examine and own up to their own thinking.

Personally, I could see myself having made that cartoon, all the while having been oblivious to any racial connection. While Obama may be president, everybody knows he's not the one who actually sat down and wrote it, or even came up with the plan. To me it seems a pretty obscure connection. Seriously, are people supposed to do an in depth study of racial slurs to find out what is acceptable and what isn't? People are conditioned to avoid anything of the sort these days, and can't really be held accountable for not knowing. Of course it could have been intentional, but no way to know for sure.

I just happen to have caught this scene from the movie Clerks 2 on tv last week, kind of fits the topic. Sorry if it's offensive, just a funny example of a dumbass who didn't know any better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Dxy...eature=related