I'm really having trouble understanding how this is funny:
The cartoon in Wednesday's edition of the tabloid New York Post, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, links two prominent US news stories – controversy over Mr Obama's economic stimulus proposals and a recent incident in which Connecticut police had to shoot dead a pet chimp that went berserk and mauled a woman.So a monkey wrote the bill? That's the joke? That's terrible. But if that's not the joke then what else could this cartoon possibly mean other than that those who wrote the bill (Democrats) are monkeys themselves. And if that's the point of your cartoon, you must know that a black man is the new leader of that party and if that's true then your are either racially tone deaf or a flat out racist. Am I missing something here?In the cartoon, drawn by Sean Delonas, a regular Post cartoonist, two officers are staring gloomily at the blood spattered chimp's corpse after one of them has shot it.
"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," says the other officer.
The cartoon drew immediate criticism from Al Sharpton, the black activist and community leader.
In a statement, Mr Sharpton said the cartoon was "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys".
He said that it could be asked whether the cartoonist was "making a less than casual reference to this" and could be "inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill".
5 comments:
Um, I think they're just making a race joke because race jokes are funny?
What I thought of (charitably) was the old joke about 100 monkeys in a room coming up with the works of Shakespeare.
In continuation with your previous post about Prince Harry's "Paki" reference, and unlike my opinion in that case, I am going to call this spade a spade. Either the cartoonist is totally oblivious to historical racial references (I have my own doubts on the plausibility of this scenario), or he was very pointed in what sort of references he was intending on making.
I am not exactly tickled over the floor laughing at the apparent joke either. Where's the funny?
Cheers
one L, race jokes are funny but there's a reason you look around first before you tell one.
DLB, I had the same thought myself but I doubt that the readership for that tabloid rag is that high-brow.
CS, that's what I'm saying. If you're going to make a crude racist joke at least make it funny, right?
JBW, It turns out we aren't the only ones that has similar opinions on this cartoon.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/nphotos/This-cartoon-image-provided-by-the-New-York-Post-appeared-in-the-Posts-Page-Six-Wednesday-Feb-18-2009-The-cartoon-which-refers-to-Travis-the-chi/photo/19022009/11/photo/cartoon-image-provided-new-york-post-appeared-post-s-page.html
check it out
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