The page in the New York Post before this cartoon featured a photograph of President Obama signing [writing] the Stimulus Bill. Putting aside the offensive connotation, does the cartoon work on any level? Is there a joke in linking the Chimpanzee gone native in Connecticut to the Stimulus Bill? What is it?
Is the cartoonist drawing on a third association, to the big laugh line from Die Hard, when an helicopter full of FBI guys, snotty agents who didn’t want the assistance of our hero, explodes, and an LAPD regular says: “I guess they’ll have to get some more FBI guys.”
What is it? The Stimulus Bill was written by a monkey? It was argued and reshaped by a dueling phalanx of legislators. It may have become disfigured, but was it by any stretch engineered by a monkey?
Certainly the moneyed class, which Murdoch represents, objects to giving any of the treasury to middle America. It can go to banks, or CEOs, or in the form of tax cuts to the multi-billionaires, but craft an economic solution that puts jobs or financial relief in the hands of ordinary people and the corporate press is not interested. So the bill author would be a bleeding-heart, or a sentimentalist, or Rainman for that matter. But where does the analogy work as a monkey?
A chimp-faced lampoon worked for Bush, because of the resemblance, and the mental acuity, and verbal skills. The Stimulus Bill can be plenty of wrong things, was it dumb?
II.
Here’s the apology the NYPost offered for their cartoon. What they said, or left unsaid, certainly didn’t match their bad taste to argue their cartoon wasn’t about Obama, but naming the piece THAT CARTOON.
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.
III.
This note came in from Rita Ague:
What’s wrong with this picture?
Of course there’s racism out there, but be careful not to fall victom to spin. Rupert M. is one of the giants in the neo-con coup d’etat. The loss of a free press to military/industrial/corporate interests, and resulting news being turned into spin and hate mongering, is but one of many reasons I’ve put back on my old legal and journalist hats.
We are in such a hell of a mess, and we’re passing that mess onto and into the rest of the world. I’m not sure we can dig ourselves out. We may not see relief, and the kind of change we of good hearts and good minds so long for, come about in our lifetime.
Let’s pray constantly that some Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch induced bigot, or a neo-con agent posing as same, does not shoot or do away with Obama. The cause of the killing will, of course, be blamed on racism. But the real reason will be the fear the neo-cons have that our new president is going to take away their power and control, and quash their currently-being-exposed incredible greed.
My fear is that Murdoch, by and through his New York Post newspaper, FOX spin and hate channel, and all the other mass media he and his Neocon cohorts own and/or control, is spinning us to believe that some forthcoming assassination, when it occurs, was inevitable and based on a rise on racism and hatred, when it was truly based on more evil, Karl Rove-like Machiavellian (the end justifies any means) manipulation.
God help and protect us all, particularly Barack Obama.
Rita followed it up with this plea to MoveOn.org:
I need your help, Marc, in getting out the warning through Move-On’s far reaching Internet connections:
BEWARE! THE GIANT (military/industrial/corporate) NEO-CON SPIN MACHINE (formerly known as the “liberal mass media”) IS CRANKING UP
OBAMA, BAR THE DOOR!!!
I’m scared, Marc. It wasn’t accidental that the Post ran the dead ape cartoon with it’s deadly caption. Nor is it an accident that we are suddenly hearing more and more about all the racism and all the ‘racist’ assassination attempts being planned and made on Obama.
My intuition/precognition will be supported if and when we hear more of this racism and hate against “The Man” jive. As the old advertising saying goes: ‘When you think they’re tired of hearing about it, that’s when they’re just beginning to catch onto what you’re trying to tell/sell.”
I could be wrong about this “IT WAS A RACIST THING THAT DID HIM IN” campaign, but just in case I’m right, shouldn’t we be safe rather than sorry, and get a Move-On Campaign and heavy duty word of mouth going through the net, that we’re onto what’s being spun in the mass media, and why it’s being spun.
For sometime now, my slogan has been UNDO THE (military/industrial/corporate) COUP! Now I think we’d better come up with a new slogan, and start spreading it, as far and as wide as we can. It could be something like:
KEEP OBAMA ALIVE AND WELL – TELL THE PRESS TO GO TO HELL!
Do you see Barack Obama in the monkey cartoon? Perhaps you have a racist mind.
Cook, I see a monkey in you.
“Cook, I see a monkey in you”
Ever the gentleman.
Then there’s a couple of trigger-happy pigs.
Funny how the Pigs aren’t offended by being portrayed as Trigger-Happy.
Perhaps if people like Sarah Palin and, Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox Nutwerks and the New York Post, weren’t such Blatant Racists and hadn’t instructed their Minions to insert race into every issue, people wouldn’t be seeing racist ideology in their propaganda.
But that’s just theoretical, as a world including Scared Sarah and Mr Murdoch is already flooded with their Racist Propaganda and they can’t actually take any of it back.
This is what the NY Post “Apology” sounds like:
Before libeling Rupert Murdoch as a racist, you should have done a bit of research on comments from Mr. Murdoch about Obama, which would revealed he had been anything but racist toward Obama during the presidential race. So much so, the Left-leaning Huffington Post published this article, below, written by a Democratic strategist, on Murdoch’s supportive words for Obama, such as, “He’s a rock star!” It would behoove you to do your homework, even posting on Internet blogs, in order to salvage any credibility.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-rosen/rupert-murdoch-says-obama_b_104018.html
“Perhaps if people like Sarah Palin and, Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox Nutwerks and the New York Post, weren’t such Blatant Racists…”
Perhaps you seeing Obama in an innocuous monkey cartoon says more about you and blatant racism than anything else.
MC, do you have an opinion even on articles outside the subject of Israel? If so, is it a coincidence that yours is always the idiot’s side?
Careful, I’m being facetious. You are revealing by your focus here, the Zionists’ concern for its vulnerable allies in the Neocon press.
Well, the joke is on you because not only am I not a “Zionist”, I’m not even Jewish. I don’t give a flip about who was in Palestine first between Jews and Arabs, nor do I really care about what happened in 1948. Most of the nation states in the region were made out of whole cloth in the 30s and 40s, but, only Israel has made something of their land and of themselves. I admire drive and success. To see Warren Buffett in Israel, where he recently purchased one of Israel’s largest industrial companies, marvel at the remarkable achievements Israel has attained in just 60 years, while the Arab nations remain firmy rooted in the 7th century, resonated with me.
He’s lying. He is Israeli because there simply is not any American that would know anything about Warren Buffet being in Israel or not. A Zionist whose ‘truth’ is so unimportant to himself even that he tells us that he is not a Zionist in the same breath as being one! Takes a lot of gall to be one of these paid sociopath military types that the Israeli military keeps. But gall is what sociopaths have in tons.
“He’s lying. He is Israeli because there simply is not any American that would know anything about Warren Buffet being in Israel or not”
Um, like it was a major business transaction for Warren Buffett and was, like, widely covered in the business media. LOL, you are too much. Here, read up and then you can pretend to be a Zionist. LOL
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114686360001745280.html?
Um, like, here’s Warren Buffett on youtube talking about his purchase of Israeli company Iscar. Ooh, maybe that means Buffett is a closet Zionist. Ooh. LOL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV3W_86NTYA
And how many Americans are reading and watching anything about Buffet? None. Did you forget that you were just so very recently trying to score points on me by claiming to be a Mr Know It All resident about the Middle East while I had never been there? Keep your lies straight, Cook! I feel sorry for somebody who makes the truth so tangential.
Well, now, given your station in life, I’d say most everyone in America is aware of Buffett if you are, considering he’s not only the richest man in America, but, has made news by pledging most of his billions of dollars to charity. Americans are not as dumb as you may think they are, although you clearly are.
So we’re to believe that you’re some sweet girl, who reads the business pages all the time and just happens to notice that Warren Buffett is doing something in Israel, is not a Zionist herself (not even Jewish) but just admires Israel, and loves to spend hours talking it up for the Zionists, stumping days on end on blogs for Zionism, and otehrwise totally obsessing about Israel?
Anything else about yourself, Melinda that you want us to believe? Can I think of you as being the Tooth Fairy perhaps, too? Oh, I am so sorry that my friends are turned off by the gross behaviors you always exhibit in your ad homidumb attacks on me. You’re so cute, ‘Melissa’. You nonZionists are just so cute.
Dude, i own shares in Berkshire Hathaway, I follow what he does. How do you know about Buffett in Israel, that’s the question? Are you a closet Zionist??? That’s what I think, you’re a secret Zionist agent spying on this blog. You’re my new favorite Zionist now.