NYPost Cartoon: Racist or Just Tasteless?

Is it racist, or just morbid?

By Gabriel Winant, Newser User

Posted Feb 18, 2009 11:06 AM CST

(Newser) – A somewhat inscrutable, certainly tasteless, and possibly racist cartoon by Sean Delonas appeared today in the New York Post and other newspapers, prompting complaints from several quarters, reports the Huffington Post. In a reference to the recent chimp attack in Connecticut, the cartoon shows two police officers, one with smoking gun, standing over a dead chimp. One officer says, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

At best, the cartoon seems to be calling the authors of a bill, unloved by the Post, crazed chimpanzees. But since the authorship is somewhat unclear—including members of Congress, White House staffers, and the first African American president—it also evokes longstanding racist themes, a connection not lost on the Rev. Al Sharpton.

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (1)]

Recent cover pages of The New York Post, top, and The Wall Street Journal are shown, Thursday, May 3, 2007 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Screenshot of the inscrutable, possibly racist Sean Delonas cartoon for the New York Post. (Huffington Post)

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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 are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill? - Rev. Al Sharpton

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NYPost Cartoon: Racist or Just Tasteless?