New York Post Cartoon Racist? Well, Certainly Tasteless

Hello World Family,
Falcon, here. Well, it seems that someone fell asleep at the editor's desk at the New York Post the other night, and a cartoon that has all the sensitivity of a great white shark bite managed to make it into the esteemed newspaper yesterday to the horror of many readers and civil rights leaders. The Post and the cartoonist of course said that if was satire. Of course, it was...so let's examine the satirical parts of this cartoon.

Hmmm...two police officers having shot a mad chimp, laying on the ground in a pool of blood dead while one of the police officers quips, "Well, I guess someone else is going to have to write the next stimulus package." Okay...let me see if I can find the humor: dead chimp...not funny. Chip who went crazy and mauled a woman to near death, attacked the owner who had raised him, and was forced to stab her partner pet of many years because he seemed to be having a contraindicated response to the medication he was on from the treatment of Lyme Disease...no nothing funny about that. Okay...so let's look at the government side: insinuation that the stimulus plan was written by a chimp, but it was composed, with lots of assistance from various sources, by our new president. calling the president an ape...not funny. Hinting that the first African American President of the United States has the mental capacity of an ape that went ballistic on contraindicated drugs, nearly killed a woman, and was shot by police, lying in a pool of blood...NOT FUNNY!

The artist indicating that he actually didn't ever think about the 400 year association in European and U.S. media associating the African American male with chimps and apes...well, now that's funny. In order to not be aware of that association, (and actually live in a place that has media, Internet, and even running water), one would have to be, hmmm, what's the word I am looking for...oh! I know! A knuckle dragging, myopic, self-absorbed, under-educated, poster child for the Peter Principle idiot...yes, I said idiot. Certainly, he doesn't expect us to believe he is that clueless, seriously! He must be misrepresenting himself. He actually did know what he was inferring, he just doesn't want anyone to think that he is a xenophobe...I get it. The former description is so much more flattering than the latter. Right...

I have no idea what was in the mind of the cartoonist. I do know that the axioms and neurons were not at full capacity in the opinion of a large percentage of individuals who saw his 'satire'.He may think he connected the proverbial dots in his attempt to infer that the Stimulus Package was composed by a mad chimp, but nothing in that image makes that full connection. It does hint at some other parallels: that those who can, do...and that those who can't don't even seem to able to make fun of it effectively. Tasteless, baseless, and clueless...those were the first things I thought when I saw the cartoon. Racist...well, to anyone with an even pedestrian understanding of race relations in the Western Hemisphere...possibly. If this was done unconsciously, it says more about the artist's psychological DNA than he may realize. A sensitivity course and some history lessons are seriously called for.

Peace, World Family! They are not all like this guy.

Stay strong, and have a great weekend!
Falcon