Just take a gander at this pathetic excuse for an "I'm sorry".
Wednesday's Page Six cartoon - caricaturing Monday's police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy.
It shows two police officers standing over the chimp's body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.
It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.
Period.
But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.
This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.
However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.
To them, no apology is due.
Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.
Well now I am confused. Was I one of "those who were offended by the image" and therefore in receipt of the apology? Or am I "some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback", and therefore not a person who was meant to receive an apology?
Well I HAVE occasionally had a difference of opinion with the New York Post, but I was not looking for "an opportunity for payback". So I am going to assume that the Washington Post DID apologize to me.
So let me take a moment to respond back. "I do not accept your apology! This was a blatant and unsophisticated attempt to make a racial joke and use the unfortunate death of a beloved pet to hide behind. There are really only two possibilities here, you are either a bunch of racist assholes, or you are too ignorant to work at a newspaper. Regardless of which definition is correct I am not about to let you off the hook. Fire both the cartoonist Sean Delonas' and the editor Col Allen immediately! Then I will accept your apology."
And for those who may believe I am being too harsh, please take a moment to revisit the cartoon below and allow your outrage to come out and play.
I am blogging on this tomorrow...was working on a post- and then saw WOW you said exactly what I was thinking...fucking unreal..first the "cartoon" was horrendous...and then their apology really was pathetic....
ReplyDeletei'm sticking with my comments to your first post about this.
ReplyDeleteit's racist. and if the long, sad history of non-whites (yeah, they did it to asians, indians, etc. too) in america and europe being depicted as subhuman primates didn't exist, there would be NO explanation for tagging that caption to this illustration!
in short, if it's not playing off racist associations it LITERALLY makes no sense and says nothing witty, critical, topical, anything-at-all.
let's review the only "non-racist" interpretation:
"hey, a pet chimp just savaged a women -literally ripping her eyes, nose, jaw, hands, and accompanying skin from her body and eating them. this forced the 70-year-old woman who'd raised him like her child for 15 years to stab him and beg police to shoot him dead, as he was "eating my friend! ripping her apart. she's dead. she's dead!"
AND, the injured woman was so disfigured that EMT's and police thought she was a man and hospital trauma staff who've worked with her through at least 7 surgeries so far are being given free therapy to cope with seeing such horrific injuries."
"damn, sounds super funny!"
"know what would make it funnier? if we could say that the lawmakers who wrote the stimulus bill treated america just like that chimp treated that lady. they should be shot!"
"awesome, i can't stop laughing!"
-i mean really, this is the only way to find "humor" in this cartoon without roping in racial history, and if that's "humor" it's at least as offensive as the racial element. combine these two obvious interpretations and i really can't think of a more despicable cartoon, ever.
gryphen, sorry for the long comments. i don't have my own blog and just had a lot to say on this one ;)
p.s.
ReplyDeletean "extra funny" of the "non-racial" interpretation of the cartoon is that uber-plastic-surgery-fan and 60-year-old-actress morgan fairchild once shot an old navy commercial with that same chimp when he was a cute baby.
she remembers him like "any sweet five-year-old" and -as she is an obvious expert on adult male chimp behavior- thinks it was "a sin" that police shot him.
the laughs keep on coming! excuse me while i vomit.
I'm sure Hitler, the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, the Army of God, and other lovely people would have given the same kind of apology as the New York Post did.
ReplyDeleteSpit.
Didn't see the cartoon till just now...it's racist. Visually reminiscent of 3rd Reich early propaganda actually. There was an exhibit of such stuff called "Degenerate Art" in Los Angeles in the '90s. Nazis used this type of imagery to make the Jewish population into scapegoats.
ReplyDeleteA cigar is sometimes just a cigar, but a cartoon is never just a cartoon.
pure ugly racism, no way around it.
ReplyDeleteThat 'apology' is not acceptable. If anything, it is adding to the ugliness involved in the cartoon.
the cartoon is very blatant racist. first you get two policemen shooting an ape. a lot of people knows that policemen are always shooting black men. Secondely, you have the ape black people have been categorized as monkeys since during slavery. Thirdly, if it was racitst why are the policemen saying the comments they made. Lame excuse for an apology. I would not boycott the newspaper but boycot the advertisement and see if they are going to continue supporting nytimes. not only does it has racist undertones, it shows a disrepect for eh leader of our country.
ReplyDeleteRacist if ever there was a racist 'cartoon'.
ReplyDeleteAlso a veiled threat to President Obama. There are too many crazies in this country to look at it that way, too - as a veiled call to kill him! :(
I'm late to the party but wanted to provide a link to BagNewsNotes, a photojournalism site that lends a thoughtful voice to analyze photos and graphics in the news. In the link cited, BagNewsNotes also analyzes this image.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2009/02/killing-that-little-monkey.html#comments
Thanks.
There sure is a big difference between, "I'm sorry, we made a mistake" and "I'm sorry you were offended." It puts the blame on the reader instead of on themselves. Shameless.
ReplyDeleteSo... they are racist assholes, or they are ignorant? These are not mutually exclusive positions.
ReplyDeleteIf I were a chimp I'd be offended by the constant likening to humans... I don't think the cartoon was supposed to be racist, not because there are no racist cartoonists, but simply because they wouldn't dare to create and publish that crap in papers, in this day and age. Maybe I'm naive? But this did remind me of the recent muslim cartoon controversy in Denmark.
ReplyDeleteI cry for the chimp...made to live in a World not his own. He should never have been allowed to be domesticated. Poor creature should have been back to his forest a long time ago! RIP Travis!
ReplyDelete