I myself have two questions about The Cartoon:

[Bicoastal]

a) If Obama was a white man, would the cartoonist still have chosen to use an ape as the subject matter for his piece?

and

b) If the answer to a) is yes, does it make the cartoon any less offensive?

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. I gotta say it: I think its nothing.

There was a recent news item about a chimpanzee going on a mad rampage, getting shot by cops.
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=f82a27e8-d85f-4a22-ba10-553a56c95f1b
Cartoonist makes joke that stimulus package was written by mad chimpazee. Right wing, yes. But I don't see the racist intent.

[uponit7771]

2. Fact: Blacks have been portrade as monkeys, Obama was involved in the stimulus package...

...the insensitivity in and of itself and lack of acknowledgment that this could be insulting to a community is racist, the "intent" is irrelevant. Try goin to work and nicely screaming the n word at a black person then go and convince HR that the "intent" was benign, same thing here.

[napoleon_in_rags]

6. I just don't think of black people when I see chimpanzees.

So a cartoonist implying that a mad chimpanzee wrote the stimulus bill (referring to recent news events) doesn't seem racist to me. I don't see chimapanzees as being correlated with a race. When Bush was referred to as chimperor and so forth it never seemed "innapropriate" or strange, though it would it would seem innapropriate and strange if people were refering to bush by racial slurs like the n-word.

[SeattleGirl]

11. You may not, but unfortunately, a lot of people do.

And therein, is one of the biggest problems with that "cartoon".

[napoleon_in_rags]

15. Yeah, see #10 for a good post. There are so many reasons it sucks...

...the fundamental debate here is on why, and really do we need to have that? It sucks.

[Hutzpa]

4. Anyone that does not see

racism in that cartton need to have ther head check....that'll be all.

:mad:

[uponit7771]

5. Some people want to burry their heads since Obama got elected and act as if racism in this country..

...isn't part of the right wings culture any longer, it is...the party was built off of fear of "others".

[napoleon_in_rags]

7. Remember the chimperor?

Presidents get compared to monkeys, but that doesn't even apply here. I think the joke was that the stimulus was written by a "mad chimpanzee", not Obama.

[thewiseguy]

9. You have to look at his past cartoons

The cartoon is simply racist.

[napoleon_in_rags]

16. I'll takr your word for it. nt

[Solomon]

20. Did you ever see a cartoon or picture of the "chimperor" being

shot dead?

[EffieBlack]

23. Can you point to any major newspaper that portrayed any previous president as a monkey?

[napoleon_in_rags]

34. I'm sure I could.

Probably going way back. But the point to me is that the cartoon is tasteless because it makes light of a recent tragedy. To me its like a cartoon with cops looking at Atta's burnt passport at the 9/11 crash site saying they need somebody to produce the next legislation. Its completely tasteless to bring the loss of human life into a cartoon in that way when its that recent.

[Bicoastal]

10. But it's a terrible cartoon no matter how you look at it...

...first of all, the incident in question was a genuine tragedy, and the woman who was mauled by this animal will never be the same again. This cartoonist decided to meld two unrelated current events together--a sign of hackwork if there ever was one--to make the really strange, ostensibly funny comment that "this stimulus package is so bad, that crazed, murderous chimp in the news could have wrote it." Excuse me if I forget to laugh.

Except everyone KNOWS who wrote the bill--it's not like it's a mystery. Obama and his staff crafted it. So a bad, unfunny idea was made even MORE offensive by the correlation.

Astute political satirists know what they're doing, and they leave nothing open to misinterpretation. This guy issued a statement, saying in effect: "Anyone who misinterprets what I was trying to say must be an idiot"--but HOW you say it is just as important. My conclusion: this guy may not be a racist, but he's possibly one of the biggest hacks working in the business today. And yes, he SHOULD lose his job--for sheer incompetence.

[napoleon_in_rags]

14. Wow, GREAT point. It really is fucking bad in general.

I mean I scanned it in terms of racism, but yeah, making light of a terrible tragedy to fling political mud. No matter how you slice it where you stand on the racism question, it is deeply tasteless.

Another thing for me is that the best humor reveals truth, and this stimulus bill has been one of the best pieces of legislation in recent history, completely called for by DEADLY SERIOUS times. So I say again, its bad bad bad, no matter how you slice it.

[Milo_Bloom]

37. BINGO!

Whether the idiot should lose his job or not is up to the paper (he probably won't because they have likely sold more copies of that issue because of the stupid cartoon and the controversy surrounding it).

[Tom Kitten]

3. my two answers

a)you'd have to ask the cartooonist to be sure, but I really doubt it... also, any comparison to the Bush/Chimp analogy does not work here and is a red herring.
b)no, dead ape, bullet holes, blood running implies dead author of stimulous bill...

Political cartoons are carefully thought out and this one to me seems to be an exception...why use the tragedy of this situation for some type of humor in the first place unless you're a rather unsensitive person looking to forward an agenda to begin with?

[Raine]

12. Yes even without the racial aspect

it's a sick cartoon. A cartoon with a dead shot animal connecting back to the chimp that darned near killed someone is sick and insensitive anyway. :mad:

[last_texas_dem]

8. a) Yes, and

b) It would be as offensive as unfunny right-wing "humor" normally is.

[SeattleGirl]

13. Reminds me of a quote of Alan Alda's on humor:

If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it isn't.

Right-wingers only know how to break things.

[4lbs]

17. The following screen snapshot is from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon that came out

in the early 1940s.






Notice how the African-American is drawn. He is drawn with monkey features.

This is just an example of how African-Americans have been portrayed since the 19th Century and even earlier.

[EFerrari]

18. The question sort of goes around this: OBAMA has been depicted as a monkey

and as an ape by the right wing nut cases. Okay? Do your own search. Mine was disgusting and I will not post it.

There is no question that they are going to keep figuring him this way. Deal with it and figure out how to push back.

[AspenRose]

24. Pushing back.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=3e8d269d36ed2ab0a0bf0b3c8463642e&gid=4717573685

[EFerrari]

31. Well done!

[RandomThoughts]

19. There are multiple meanings to the monkey symbol

One of them is less evolved. That one is used alot and transcends race. It is not racial when people use it that way. (however I do not agree with that use either)

However, many groups that are racist consider other races less evolved. (I also do not believe that either.)

It should be noted, that skin pigmentation changes with a change of environment darker skin protects from cancer better in high sun areas, and lighter skin allows for better vitamin D absorption in low sun areas. To treat people differently because of this is really dumb.

But to answer the original question.

So when Bush was called a monkey, it was because of his comical lack of thinking antics.

If someone is calling Obama a monkey they are doing it strictly because of the color of his skin.

In some respect, the use of the label for Bush is an evaluation of his actions, and so is less offensive, and does not excuse the racism that was in that cartoon.

[Rashel]

21. I have two questions as well.

How does the cartoonist link the two together? (stimulus bill/chimp incident? It's not logical.

Why does the cartoonist say "we'll have to find someone else to WRITE the stimulus bill, when it's already written? (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe he said "sign") Did he really mean to write the cartoon saying, "now we'll have to find someone else for the NEXT bill? Was that his sloppy way of disguising his intent to portray assassination?

Okay, that's more than two questions.

[KittyWampus]

22. if you go through cartoonist's archives he regularly takes sensational news story of the day

and links it to some political event.

It's his MO.

Not defending him, just saying that is his schtick.

[dbmk]

25. Still, something has to fit. And I don't like how he made this one fit.

[Rashel]

27. The only thing that he made "fit" was that the writer of the bill is a monkey and has been shot.

There is no mistaking that. So he is advocating violence against our political system.

Other than that, there is no relevance between the monkey incident and the stimulus bill. None.

He may as well have pulled out the Octomom and tryed to tie her in. At least he could have used her children as future congress members instead of portraying an animal shot dead. So sick.

(BTW I agree with you, just bringing up more points.

[KittyWampus]

29. he did pull out the Octomom and used her in a previous cartoon attacking the Stimulus Bill

[MsUnderstood]

26. this is truely a ridiculous debate

Democrats spent 8 years calling bush a monkey, depicting bush as a monkey, laughing when bush's exaggerated features resembled a monkey.

Then a cartoon indicates the stimulus bill (WHICH OBAMA DID NOT AUTHOR) was written by a monkey and everyone yells RACISM?

FACT: that cartoon was in poor taste, but only because it mocked the death of someone's pet/companion
(not for any reasons of race relations)
FACT: Obama did not write the bill, he supported and he signed it so OBAMA cannot represent the monkey.
FACT: The monkey has no humanistic features to indicate it is OBAMA so the monkey cannot represent OBAMA

OPINION: assuming a monkey with NO human characteristics is automatically a black man is racist--you are automatically assuming that monkeys look like black men and therefore the monkey is a black man.

Hate the cartoon for the childishnish but get away from the Racism Kool-Aid. This was simply a bad cartoon.

[Uncle Joe]

28. If the cartoonist had used anything and Obama were white, it still would have been offensive because

it projected a subliminal message of violence against the President of the United States.

If the cartoonist had been a columnist and said jokingly let's shoot the President and that will stop future stimulus bills from being passed, the Secret Service would or should be knocking at his door.

[Political Heretic]

30. a) yes. b) yes.

Look.....

If no chimp had been shot yesterday, then I could see how the bizarre selection of a chimp and what not would raise some eyebrows. But as it stands, I myself happened to joke to a friend, after seeing the story in the newspaper, "damn, now they'll have to find someone else to write the federal budget!" (as we'll have spending the budget coming up soon and I for one thing the government's "budgets" are fucking ass backwards, regardless of which party is in charge.)

So am I a racist now? No, I'm someone who saw the news story about an actual chimp gone crazy and made a joke. Nothing more or less.

There's no "OMG two holes" like some have said - there's four. There's a "beware of dog" sign because the seen being depicted, the real life picture the cartoon wants us to connect to, has a huge beware of dog sign on a poll just like the one depicted. There are no cues to suggest that the chimp is anything other than a chimp. The text says "someone" not because its referring to Obama and not congress, but because its referring to the ONE. DEAD. CHIMP. on the ground!

The fact that people won't even remotely consider the possibility that perhaps we're just a little tiny bit too hyper-vigilant about the racism we anticipate seeing and that this causes us to see overt racism everywhere we turn (OMG he used black ink! BLACK. INK. THAT RACIST FUCK HEAD!!) is pretty sad, and means I'm in for a long eight years of annoyance.

To quote another DUer:

"
"The chimp is a chimp. There are no other cues, be they cues that it is Congress or cues that it is Obama. The chimp represents nothing but the chimp that was shot yesterday. If it were intended to represent something else, such as Obama, I would think it would have a cue, since as you point out he labels everything else he intends to stand for something. The cartoonist is saying, "the bill is so bad, it is as if that deranged chimp had written it."

That is not the same as saying "Obama is a dead chimp," which does not even make sense."

[Occam Bandage]

32. a) Of course. b) No.

[Bad Thoughts]

33. It;s Still Violence

Let's see: is it appropriate for an editorial to say that the right reaction to a policy with which one may agree is to shoot someone?

[Milo_Bloom]

35. What if the chimp doesn't represent Obama?

And instead the actual writer of the stimulus bill... Congress?

This cartoon is ONLY offensive if you assign the meaning you want to it.

[last_texas_dem]

36. But then the DU majority wouldn't get to be outraged, and that's just not as fun.