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Thanks, Chris, that was exactly the point missed.

Whether or not someone can infer offense is irrelevant. All that matters is whether someone implied offense. There is no evidence that the cartoonist intended to make a racist statement.

President Obama didn’t write the stimulus bill – Congress did. Comparing Congress to chimpanzees seems only offensive to the chimpanzees.

Racism is treating an individual differently because of their race. For the last eight years a common joke has been comparing Bush to a chimp. See http://bushorchimp.com

It seems to be a pretty simple riff on the whole “a monkey could write this” thing.

Besides, I thought it was kind of funny.

Yeah, it’s racist.

Why can’t we assume that it meant that Obama hired that monkey to write the stimulus bill instead of doing it himself? It makes a lot more sense that way (and would actually be funny).

Anyway, it’s ok when it was “haha, Bush looks like a monkey”, but when it’s “haha Obama looks like a monkey” then it’s suddenly not cool but racist? Context is everything, of course, but trying to make that dead monkey into Obama seems somewhat paranoid (eg. everything is about racism).

Not only is there a long history of associating African-Americans with primates but there is specifically a long history of the police making such associations. On the other hand, there is not a long history of comparing European-Americans to primates.

That’s why it’s okay to make “George Bush looks like a chimp” jokes, because he did, at times, look like a chimp. In a similar way, it would also be okay to depict Bush in chains and being whipped because there is not a long history of white people in slavery in this country.

Intent is important but so is the message that can be drawn from the art, especially if the artist is a clueless fool. If I decided it would be great to protest tax policy by burning lower-case t’s on the White House lawn, isn’t the possible interpretation that a viewer brings relevant?

At best, it’s a tone-deaf, clunky, unfunny cartoon.

[...] edition of the New York Post contains an editorial apology for Wednesday’s cartoon that showed two police officers shooting a monkey while making a reference to the recently passed [...]

I once heard a researcher claim that an ordinary chimp is about as smart as a three-year-old human. I think the cartoon is saying that the stimulus bill looks like it was written by immature and ignorate people. It was funny, but explaining the joke takes all the fun out of it.

I’m afraid we’re going to see this ridiculus behaviour over many cartoons about President Obama. People who don’t like seeing their their god at the butt of a joke will be quick to cry of racism.

I know this is a late comment, but I have to say it.

To say someone is crying racism is ludicrous. If you are not Black, you should never comment on racism. I’m aware that other ethnic groups have been discriminated against as well, but never to the extent of Blacks. Until you’ve been falsely accused, profiled because you have a nice car or called a n**, you cannot fathom the hurt that comes from these situations. It’s easy to sit around with rose colored glasses on and think that the world is fair, but it’s not. These statements clearly show what we all know, racism will never end. People have learned to disguise it, but it still lingers under the surface.