I've been waiting for the first article/editorial/political cartoon to come out that would bring about the race card. Apparently, the Washington Post is the first.

There is a cartoon with two officers standing there over the body of a dead chimp and one says to the other "I guess they'll have to get someone else to write the next stimulus bill." Now Sharpton and co. are screaming racism and others are picketing the Post and demanding an apology.

The one major flaw in the race card? Obama didn't write the bill. Obama can't write the bill. It's in the constitution.

The Post has explained that the comment was in reference to the fact the bill could have been written by a chimp. This was also my first thought. It was hastily done and did not have any real research done beforehand. Being that the Post is a conservative leaning (imagine that) newspaper this makes total sense.

This is the biggest problem with a black president: you have to tiptoe around everything to avoid having some activist screaming racist. Bigotry comes from both angles - both the racist and those that scream racist at everything that can be stretched to racism even when completely harmless.

Yea... I saw that cartoon. I see nothing wrong with being pissed about it. I don't think this is "the problem" with having a black president. We aren't "tiptoeing" around him either. I can easily see how people could be offended by that cartoon.

I didnt vote for obama but I think this in in very bad taste...wow, amazing that people like this fool still exsist in the world not funny at all....

I'm not an Obama supporter either, but that is sick.

The reference or the image? I don't think anyone will argue the graphic nature is tasteful.

both. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people haven't let go of hate. whether that cartoon was about obama or in general or whatever....it's not right IMO

Calling someone a monkey can be a racist slur on a black person, or it can be a way to call someone stupid. That could have been about Bush and nobody would have batted an eyelid.

you are right..but for me...I don't agree with it one way or another IMO

I see your point. However, Black people have been compared to monkys for years and years. It's like this is the first time. So you can't expect for it to not be taken that way.

but the phrase "so easy even a monkey could do it" has been around just as long. That's instantly where my mind went.

I thought it was caveman I couldn't resist lol

I dont think the Washington Post would be that stupid to make such a racist joke about anyone, let alone the president.

Jokes should be taken in the way they are meant, not in the way you can twist them to mean something else.

Ah, but no one can read minds, can they? Well, there may be a few.... hehehe.

But life experience and education and knowledge are what shape our first reactions to these political cartoons.

I see a chimp and a typewriter and the first thing I think of is, "if you put enough chimps in a room with a typewriter, they will eventually write the works of shakespeare."

Since the first time I saw this cartoon, it was in the thread, and OP put the text above the picture, so that colored how I read it. That's what I saw right off.

Now if I had seen it before reading anything, I probably would have thought it meant that it was so badly written that it looked like a monkey wrote.

Of course, what would bother me about it is why police had shot the monkey in the first place. Actually, I would think it was actually a threat against the key writer of the bill. That somehow the bill would destroy the writers of it. But that still doesn't explain the police.

I reckon the police shooting the monkey had to do with the story about the monkey being gunned down after attacking a woman.

Now that I get. But I don't get the link between that and the stimulus package. That's where it falls apart for me.

Now that particular news story pisses me off. Why the hell were the police sent for an animal situation and not Animal Control. That that's a whole other topic.

No matter which way you spin it, this is disgusting. This editor or writer should be ashamed to have put something out like this.

The editor says it was referencing the chimp attack recently in the news.

My read is the editor is trying to have it both ways.

He can claim he is making a timely reference but he is also playing to racists who see something different in the cartoon.

Fine by me either way really. Political and social humor teach us all to both look inward at our own strengths and failings and outward at society.

If you feel like venting.

http://mingle2.com/topic/show/206142

I don't understand why everyone is screaming racism about it. Then again Al Sharpton is bat s*it crazy anyway O_O

OMG I SAID MONKEYS I'M A RACIST! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH




MONKEY MONKEY MONKEY!