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NYPost Cartoon: Racist or Just Tasteless?
Is it racist, or just morbid?
By Gabriel Winant
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Posted Feb 18, 09 11:06 AM CST
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(Newser)
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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.