Give the cartoonist/editorial staff the most charitable interpretation, the Post is still racist

[grantcart]

Rather than looking at the cartoon and comparing the history of the cartoonists use of animals, lets look at the cartoon as an incident and not a work of art (sic).

Let us give the cartoonist the most charitable possible interpretation:

Said cartoonist is completely oblivious to the use of Simian representing African Americans in history, even though he lives in the city that includes the cultural heartland for African American scholarship and culture. It really is not possible to go so far to think that the cartoonist wasn't aware that some people would think that the bullet riddled chimp was the president, if he lacks that degree of self awareness then he shouldn't be publishing political cartoons.

Let us give the editorial staff the most charitable possible interpretation:

They are lazy.

That still leaves us with ownership. The minute that they realized tens of thousands of their fellow New Yorkers had felt the slap of racism then they should have issued an immediate apology saying that wasn't their intent and that they will try to take such factors into consideration at the same time. They could have then published other cartoons by the same cartoonist to make the point.


But they didn't do it. Couldn't have been too hard several threads at DU have done just that.

They knew the ambiguity was there.

Why did they not issue a strong and immediate apology?

Because they wanted to maintain a "were tough and we don't listen to THOSE guy" atmosphere of their paper.

And that's because they are racists.

They just didn't give a damn that tens of thousands of their fellow New Yorkers were taken back to another time when all of the New York papers regularly ran cartoons showing African Americans as primates.

And so, even if you go the extra mile for the cartoonist and the editorial staff, the ownership revealed just how racist they really are.


They are the dispicable people we thought they were.

[jpgray]

1. It was irresponsible and ignorant to publish, whatever the intent

Even if the cartoonist's motives were snow-pure, the cartoon is still in horrible taste, and anyone with a slim knowledge of racist iconography should have known that it would seem dangerous, threatening, and hateful to many. Their response thus far is only piling up more shameful behavior.

I submit that there is reasonable doubt as to the cartoon's intent. There is no reasonable doubt that it was stupid and irresponsible to publish it.