Racist New York Post cartoon....what were they thinking?!

On Wensday, Feb. 14th, the New York Post ran a cartoon by Sean Delonsa showing two police officers conversing over the bullet ridden courpse of a monkey. The caption of one of the officers reads "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

After its release there was an uproar about the racial content of the cartoon. Many peopl have marked the drawing as racist towards President Obama.

In an editorial this past Friday, Feb. 20th, Rupert Murdock apologized for the paper running the cartoon as reported by the BBC.

"As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me," said Murdock. "Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted."

While this might quell the angers of some of the people who have seen the cartoon, others might not let this mockery of the nation's first half black half white president go with out a fight.

Still some people do not find the harm in the cartoon and say that people are going to far by thinking that the chimp in the cartoon is President Obama.

For others, including myself, the cartoon seems odd in the fact that the artist was relating two seperat events, President Obama signing the stimulus bill and the shooting of a crazed chimp in Stamford Conneticut.

"It's dumb," said Lakesha Robins, a student at the University of Memphis. "How did the cartoonist think that this was funny, what was he drinking to make him think about trying to connect these two events. He must have been out of it."

This reporter agrees, what was Delonsa thinking when he drew this cartoon? Did he even think of the ramifications of his actions? Did he care?

When all is said and done Mr. Delonsa will have to deal with the outcome of his actions and perhaps spend time reflecting on his mistake, both from a racial stand point and from a logical stand point.

______________________________UPDATE________________________________

Upon a fifth look at this cartoon, I have come to the realization that this cartoon is not as bad as it has been made out to be.

There has been a problem with this cartoon because so many people have heard about it by word of mouth. With so much press about this cartoon, the line that uttered by one of the police men in this cartoon has been misconstrued and many people have viewed it with an already hostile mind set. Like I have stated in this blog, one of the police officers in the cartoon said "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

With this piece of information the subject of the cartoon actually changes, since President Obama did not actually write the stimulus bill he only signed it into action. The subject of the cartoon is now clearly the United States' Congress.

Even though the cartoon is not about President Obama, Mr. Delonsa's cartoon is still hard to understand. There is not a clear conection between the vicious chimp attack and our country's stimulus bill. Again, perhaps Mr. Delonsa should consider how easy it is to make the connection from one news story to another, or maybe he should make the connection more apparent.