Do you think the New York Post's cartoon regarding a chimp and President Obama is offensive, or is it the same as President Bush being compared to a chimpanzee?
Racist, unfunny, hilarious, confusing, lame. Reactions are as varied as they are strong to the New York Post cartoon that depicted the police shooting of a chimpanzee. Two police officers, one with a smoking gun, are near the chimp's bullet-pierced body. "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.
The Post's Sean Delonas used a typical editorial cartoon trope of linking two current news stories: the shooting of a chimp after it mauled a Connecticut woman and President Obama's signing of the stimulus bill. But soon after the issue hit newsstands, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and other black opinion makers such as CNN's Roland Martin, blasted the cartoon as an attack on Obama's skin color and African-Americans in general...
Why would a black person automatically identify themselves as a chimpanzee? It seems like they're insecure. Black people are not monkeys they are humans so there's no reason to assume a chimp is representative of a black guy - - unless you're racist or insecure.
People called Bush a chimp for years and no-one cried racism.
I don't think it was necessarily MEANT to be racist, but it comes off that way.
It's not the same as calling Bush a chimp, because the same "monkey stigma" isn't attached to white people.
This stigma is derived from a supposedly "scholarly" text from the mid-1800s, called "The Negro: What is his Ethnological Status?"
And I quote:
"[W]e take up the monkey, and trace him ... through his upward and advancing orders – baboon, ourang-outang and gorilla, up to the negro, another noble animal, the noblest of the beast creation. The difference between these higher orders of the monkey and the negro is very slight, and consists mainly in this one thing: the negro can utter sounds that can be imitated; hence he could talk with Adam and Eve, for they could imitate his sounds.”
NOW can people see why it's 100x more offensive to compare a black man to a chimp?
I mean, there's a history of comparing the two in order to cast black people in a negative light (the author of that text even went so far as to say that "negroes have no souls," by the way).
It's not the same as an off-the-cuff comment about the faces Bush makes looking similar to the faces chimps make.
Ask yourself why would anyone compare Obama to a monkey other than because he is Black.
With Bush it was because of his facial expressions, people went out of their way to find comparative pictures, which by and large proved there was a significant similarity.
That's not the case with Obama though. With the dead chimp cartoon they are not comparing him to the chimp, they are insinuating the chimp IS Obama and also that the police officers have assasinated him.
In today's world, calling someone dumb (comparing white guy toa chimp) is a lot less inflammatory than the racist implication of calling a black guy a chimp. There's a history of calling black people apes as an insult, but not one of calling white people apes.
On Sunday 2/22/09 - 3:25:08 PM Boredofu wrote: Ask yourself why would anyone compare Obama to a monkey other than because he is Black. With Bush it was because of his facial expressions, people went out of their way to find comparative pictures, which by and large proved there was a significant similarity. That's not the case with Obama though. With the dead chimp cartoon they are not comparing him to the chimp, they are insinuating the chimp IS Obama and also that the police officers have assasinated him.
One of the seven signs.
I agree 100% with boredofu. Couldn't state it any better than this.
On Sunday 2/22/09 - 4:55:23 PM Cheese King wrote: For the last time, THE MONKEY'S NOT OBAMA The cartoon is just saying the stimulus was badly written, the old monkeys-on-typewriters joke. It's not about anyone in particular.
Oh, of course.
Just a coincidence that the writer of the stimulus is black, right?
Get your head out of your ass.
^Obama wrote the stimulus plan? wow, how does he have time to draft a 1,000 page bill? man, either he can type REALLY fast, or he has more time on his hands than congressmen and senators. unless you are referring to the staffer who wrote the bill (or whoever actually did), then fair enough. but I kind of doubt you know who wrote it. and I am also pretty sure that the bill was written in the capitol not in the white house, I mean it is legislation...
On Sunday 2/22/09 - 3:25:08 PM Boredofu wrote: Ask yourself why would anyone compare Obama to a monkey other than because he is Black.
Ok...let us consider why/who might be compared to a chimp, and why.
Pres. Obama didn't write the stimulus bill, the monkey did- why do we assume that the author was referencing him?
Congress enjoys less popularity than the President, and they wrote the bill. Perhaps it is focused at them?
The idea of chimps on typewriters that Cheese King mentioned is a probable allusion.
On Sunday 2/22/09 - 3:25:08 PM Boredofu wrote: ... they are not comparing him to the chimp, they are insinuating the chimp IS Obama and also that the police officers have assasinated him.
Again, no. All they have done is insinuated that the stimulus bill was written by monkeys. Obama was not mentioned or even referenced.
He doesn't need to be "referenced", It's a cartoon not an essay.
and Congress voted on the bill.... everywhere I look I see it referred to as President Obama's stimulus package.
Congress didn't formulate the bill on their own intitiative did they?
I'm sure he didn't personally type it nor did he think up every aspect of it but as President he commisioned it and as he has said, the buck stops here.
On Sunday 2/22/09 - 11:33:44 PM Boredofu wrote: He doesn't need to be "referenced", It's a cartoon not an essay. and Congress voted on the bill.... everywhere I look I see it referred to as President Obama's stimulus package. Congress didn't formulate the bill on their own intitiative did they? I'm sure he didn't personally type it nor did he think up every aspect of it but as President he commisioned it and as he has said, the buck stops here.
As far as i know the only bill a president can write is the yearly budget and he can only draft that.
On Monday 2/23/09 - 1:35:19 AM Boredofu wrote: Did I say he wrote it? No I didn't, I said he comissioned it, so shove your link and your wanky comment up your arse.
actually for the record bush commissioned it, obama asked bush to hold off until he was in office, in essence obama had nothing to do with this at all but his signature on the paper