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You might have heard that the New York Post ran a cartoon today that depicts one (white, male) police officer saying to another (white, male) police officer who has just shot a chimpanzee on the street: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." There's a blogstorm going on about whether the cartoon is racist. The Post editors saying that it's obviously a mashup of two recent news events: Tuesday's signing of the stimulus bill and Monday's police shooting of a pet chimp who attacked a Connecticut woman. Actually, it's an obvious act of irresponsible journalism.
First, let's look at this as a matter of editorial judgment. Editorial cartoonists have wide latitude to criticize public figures and comment on public events, which is a good thing. Editors have the responsibility to ensure that their editorial art meets certain basic standards. For one thing, it should have a clear point, just as a written opinion piece should. It can be provocative, but it shouldn't be the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. If a public figure is the subject, it doesn't have to be literally true, as long as the untruth can be understood to be satire.
If the reactions of public officials, bloggers and commenters on the NY Post website is any indication, the cartoon failed on just about every count. There's a lot of confusion about what the cartoon was trying to say, for starters.
Sam Stein at the Huffington Post couldn't tell exactly what Delonas was trying to say:
At its most benign, the cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so
bad, monkeys may as well have written it. Others believe it compares
the president to a rabid chimp.
Media critic Eric Deggans thought the Post's editors should have realized that the cartoon would be seen as racist and wondered:
[W]hy would a major newspaper in the most diverse city in America publish a cartoon which could be taken this way?
Gawker offers a gallery of controversial Delonas cartoons, although most of these seem to have a clearer point than this latest offering.
Richard Prince's excellent round-up notes a New York Times blog post reporting criticism from NY Sen. Kristin Gillibrand ("intentionally hurtful"), questions from Gov. David Paterson ("I hope that they would clarify") and an anonymous report from a Post staffer that many of the newspaper's employees were upset by the cartoon.
Joy Reid says that the people who are most offended are those who think of Pres. Obama as the prime mover behind the stimulus package:
[I]f you think Congressional Democrats are that crazy monkey, your
outrage level is probably at about level 5 (if you're a Dem, zero if
you're a Republican.) If you think Obama was responsible for the bill
(and you're not one of those inevitable nuts on the Internet who compare every monkey on Youtube to a black person ... scroll down to the comments, you'll see what I mean...) then let's just put you down for 10. ... or maybe 12.
According to Reid, that accounts for the anger emanating from the National Association of Black Journalists, whose president, Barbara Ciara called the cartoon "nothing short of racist drivel," adding:
I question the judgment of the editorial editors to move this to print
as well as the diversity of its staff that would let them think this
passes as comedy.
On the other hand, the bloggers at These Bastards say it's obvious that the cartoon wasn't about Obama:
Grow up, breathe, and go cover the probable dozens of things in today's
Post that were 30-40 times more racist than the cartoon. For Christ's
sake, they run columns by Ann Coulter.
And New York Daily News blogger Elizabeth Patterson accuses the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the first to demand an explanation from the Post editors, of "grinding a bit of an historical axe" because Delonas and the Post have lambasted him in the past. On his website, Sharpton asked:
In a statement on his website, Sharpton argued:
Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of
President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has
become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder whether the Post
cartoonist was inferring that a monkey wrote it? Given that the New
York Post cartoonist has come under heavy fire in the past for racially
tinged cartoons including the infamous cartoons depicting 2001 mayoral
candidate Freddy Ferrer and me in very unflattering
