Cross-Posted from The Proverbial Tundra
No doubt you've seen this cartoon already, but I'll post it one more time:
Quick edit: Some comments have said having the cartoon here is a copyright violation? I don't see how it's possible to discuss this without showing the cartoon. I think it's fair use for discussing a news story. Here is the link to it on Sharpton's website: http://www.nationalactionnetwork.net...
The general consensus, no doubt fueled by comedian Al Sharpton and his National Action Network, is that this is a racist bigoted cartoon advocating that someone kill the president.
But it's not, and I will explain why.
First of all, most people aren't from New York City, so they don't know the local new stories that are getting a lot of air time. Just recently an event happened in a suburb:
The chilling screams of a crazed chimp mauling a Connecticut woman were captured on a 911 tape - along with the animal's owner begging, "Send police with guns!"
The 15-minute recording captures the bizarre horror of Monday's attack, which left a 55-year-old woman critically injured and the 200-pound ape dead in a hail of police gunfire.
"Hurry, please! He ripped her face off," the ape's frantic owner, Sandy Herold, 70, is heard telling the dispatcher on the tapes released Tuesday night.
This is a huge story that is going national. I heard about it on Opie & Anthony this morning before I saw the cartoon. This event was the context for the cartoon, showing police having shot a chimpanzee, and it is downright foolish for someone who didn't know this to comment on the cartoon.
SIDEBAR: Why isn't Al Sharpton, in his ever-expanding Global War on Racism, not pointing out how the cops have big noses, a well-known Jewish stereotype. We all know how many Jews there are in New York City.
One of the points being made by the anti-cartoon faction is that this is racist because "blacks have often been compared to monkeys by racists." Well, to those who know the context, it wasn't a monkey in the cartoon, it was a chimpanzee, so there goes that argument.
I sent the cartoon to a friend to get his reaction to the cartoon:
Screen Name Edited* (12:07:54 PM): my first reaction was that it was actually quite offensive with a very real racist slant....but then the people who actually wrote the bill were the congressmen -- whites, mostly
Screen Name Edited* (12:08:26 PM): so its just sharpton or whomever trying to get some publicity and more power
There you have it, at first glance, one could get the wrong idea, but as soon as you actually look at it, it actually makes sense as a political point (albeit one I disagree with and most here would disagree with as well).
What political point is this trying to make? Well, most people can't see past the dead chimpanzee to actually find the point, so I'll spell it out here:
The New York Post is a sensationalist, conservative-leaning newspaper owned by Rupert Murduch, so you can expect their opinions to reflect that and one would surmise that they would be against the stimulus package. The chimpanzee that mauled the woman was a highly trained animal loved by the public, and yet at the end, it tore the face off of a woman and had to be shot by the cops. The stimulus package is a 1000 page document, $700+ billion, written by the "best and the brightest" Congress has to offer, and the cartoonist is suggesting that it will turn out horribly, like the chimp mauling the woman.
There it is, NO RACISM. We have a saying: "DON'T FEED THE TROLLS." Al Sharpton is a troll, don't feed him.