Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Being a Cartoonist

The New York Post printed this cartoon today by Sean Delonas.













What does it mean?

4 comments:

Bob Foster said...

Judith – I assume what they are referring to here is the 200 pound Chimpanzee that recently attacked a women and was then shot and killed by police officers. The caption apparently insinuates that the 200 pound Chimp wrote the stimulus bill. Definitely not my kind of humor—but then, I never have cared for the New York Post’s cartoons.

Judith Ellis said...

Bob - There is no doubt what the reference is here and it's not the primate. After all, the policeman says "they'll have to find SOMEONE else to write the bill." Personally, I found it offensive. I also had concerns about the President's safety. He has more secret service agents than any other president in our history. Our prayers are with him.

Anonymous said...

i doubt that this has anything to do with race.
the chimp attacking someone was big news because it was weird.
if you happened to disagree with the stimulus package (i don't, but of course readers of the new york post probaly do) it is a good gag.
If Hillary had become president and she had put through a stimulus just before a chimp had been shot to death for attacking a person, the writer of this cartoon would have had the same idea and the post would have printed it.
To paraphase Dr Freud, sometimes a Chimp is just a chimp.

Judith Ellis said...

Dot -Thanks for popping in and commenting. Everyone is subject to an opinion and I hear yours. But you need not even be an American, with our historical past, to acknowledge the racial element in this cartoon. If you were from another planet it could be understood how this element may not be seen. What about the sensitivity of the cartoonist? How many times did we see President Obama as monkey during the campaign on t-shirts and signs? There were countless of such insensitive images.

Is this the kind of political discourse we want to engage in? It doesn't matter who's doing it. I would not approve.

If Hillary Clinton was depicted as a chimp that was shot to death by policemen, I would oppose to such a violent image too. But I must say that the historical context would change dramatically, thus cast differently. There is a reason why we are discussing this. The image is not one that has just simply dropped into the imagination of so many, black and white. This cartoon is an issue for a reason; it drudges up our racial historical violent past.

Do you think an African American would have drawn such an image and written such a caption?

By the way, Dr. Freud seemed to need a psychiatrist himself. He made many perverted and disturbing links apparently drawn out of his own disturbance.