Thread: Cartoon Said to Link Obama to Dead Chimp

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

Now, to that, I will say this: (and I'm playing Devil's Advocate, here, so keep that in mind. I'm not lending any truth to the alleged implication of the article.)

When mocking racial heritage against blacks, the word 'monkey' is used often.

Heh, I was a little facetious with the "it wouldn't be a chimp" argument, though I think that kind of associative reasoning is a major player in this story. Still, for the record: chimps are apes, not monkeys.

Originally Posted by Oneironaut

That is how it's being received. I do believe that it was in poor taste - if nothing else, with a complete ignorance as to how it may be received by blacks.

As I pick up more background about the Post (and how many New Yorkers feel about the Post), I'm thinking the cartoonist and his editor weren't totally oblivious, though I disagree that the reception is divided along race lines: by my informal poll of the interwebs, plenty of white people are up in arms and plenty of black people just shaking their heads at the whole circus. It seems like a lot of the initial momentum for this thing came out of standing hostilities between the NYPost and liberal black activists in NYC, particularly one Rev. Sharpton, and it has less to do with race than politics.

Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

You know, the more I consider it, the more I think this is a great cartoon about racism. If the cartoon was obvious about a connection to Obama, race, assassination, ect it would just be in bad taste, and dismissed as another example of ignorant racism. The fact that it is unclear if the artist originally intended it to be racist or not is exactly what makes it great. The viewer is forced to make the connections, shining a mirror on their own thoughts, and making them "own" the racist aspects.

That's pretty much where I'm at: where it was originally just an unfunny, distasteful drawing, now it's this ambiguous image sowing cognitive dissonance. I disagree that people are "owning" the thoughts it stirs up, though. What I'm seeing is a lot of people who made the Obama-->chimp connection on their own or let others talk them into it are now trying to heap their sins on the NYPost and drive it out of the village, with a lot of the Post's standing enemies handing out pitchforks and queuing up the mob.

This thread is the most reasonable discussion of the matter I've come across so far.