the NY Post lives down to its reputation

[redbird]

It took Rupert Murdoch's New York Post about a month to go from putting the oath of office on the front page of the paper to publishing a stupid, racist cartoon about President Obama. I'm not linking to it here, because it's ugly, offensive, and not remotely funny. I can't boycott the post, because I stopped reading it years ago for reasons only partly political. (When I was growing up, before the Murdoch days, my parents got it as well as the NY Times, because the Post had late sports results and cartoons.)

I was reminded of this by a friend who posted, comments disabled, but with a link to a story that included the cartoon. She expressed surprise that it wasn't all over her friends list; I suspect this is a combination of people figuring it's been mentioned in the regular press and doesn't need to be discussed here, and a weary "yes, it's run by obnoxious right-wingers, big surprise." The president's press secretary settled for a remark to the effect that the NY Post isn't very newsworthy.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

That's not "settling", that's a brilliant and withering remark. Hee!

(I'd heard the story - it was on CNN International and the English-language radio station - but not the response.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Also, I haven't seen the actual cartoon, but when I first heard the story, I confess my immediate reaction was "Well, just because Al Sharpton says something is racist doesn't mean it is!" And then they described the cartoon, and, well, yeah, if the description is accurate (and I assume it is) it doesn't sound to me like the Rev. Al is overreacting in the slightest.

[redbird]

I saw it. Just because Al Sharpton is one of the people on an issue doesn't mean it's trivial.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

No, but the first time I heard the story they made it sound like he *was* the main person reacting. (Obviously this could be inadequate reporting rather than fact.) When I wrote, "My first thought was..." I meant "For 20 seconds, until they described the actual content." Every news story I've heard so far has described it in a way that makes it pretty shocking that anyone *wouldn't* consider the cartoon racist

Sharpton, for me, is one of the people who if he's fussing and no one else is (clearly not the case this time) it usually means that either he's looking for trouble or he's being a canary in a coal mine, reacting first to something that's about to explode. It may not be fair that I tend to assume the former, but as long as I listen carefully to the rest of the story to make my own decision I don't think my bias is harming my judgement. (There are a few public figures I class in that group; some of them are in groups I belong to, most work for causes I support. It's just an individual reaction.)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

No, but the first time I heard the story they made it sound like he *was* the main person reacting.

That's the way it's being played some places: "Oh, there goes Al Sharpton again."

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Disappointing - CNN's usually reasonable. Not that it matters; if I want TV news they're the only game in town. At least this time, they did give a good description of the cartoon including the caption, enough info to let me make up my own mind.

However I did like their report on the Atty. General's comments about the segregation remaining in America: "Conservative bloggers have called his words reprehensible, but the facts say that he's correct."

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Ill Doctrine's take on the subject (http://www.illdoctrine.com/2009/02/monkeys_and_trolls.html) which comes down to, "The New York Post is and has been a troll for a long time, and should be treated like other trolls." And also that he doesn't know "if they played the 'Black people are monkeys' card on purpose or by accident," and doesn't really care because "this is a 'what you did' situation, not a 'what you are' situation."

He makes the point which could be a distraction and a tangent or could be added ammunition, depending on how you take it, that even if this was about exactly what Rupert Murdoch claimed it was about, it's hard to see where there's any humor in that, either.

Frankly, as far as I can tell, people are talking 'boycott' because they want an apology. But that's the kind of thing that makes sense when an organization that usually stays on the safe side of a line crosses it and needs to get slapped down for same. So if the NY Post generally doesn't venture into not-very-subtle stereotyping and/or bigotry, and this was out of left field as well as out of line, then okay, I think protests of various forms are appropriate. But if the NY Post makes its money by getting people mad on a regular basis, then this isn't a time to stop buying as a maneuver to get a concession, it's just an indication that probably we should have stopped buying a long time ago - not to get an apology, but because no one wants to spend money on or propagate crap.

So I don't know which scenario it is. I'm missing so much of the context that despite having seen a brief glimpse of the cartoon, I can't figure out why it's being read as Obama rather than some other black man who's been gunned down by police, which is, y'know, not unheard of. I'm sure there is a context that makes it all make sense, and I'm really not asking anyone to explain it to me because I don't need to know. I don't like it, no matter what.

[redbird]

Because the text is talking about writing the stimulus bill.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

That seems to settle it, yes.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

It's read as Obama because of the comment about the stimulus bill, I guess; but I don't really understand the symbolism in the cartoon either.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

There's a longstanding depressing tradition of Black people being referred to as monkeys, chimpanzees, etc. If I felt like getting myself that riled up before bed I'd find some links to articles about the Curious George = Obama T-shirts that were sold during last year's campaign.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

There's a longstanding depressing tradition of ...

Well, I knew that. What I'm missing is why the Connecticut chimp is Obama in particular rather than Blacks in general; or alternately, if it's just a reference to the Connecticut chimp and not actually supposed to be it, why the cops would be shooting Obama. Were Obama in any way a frenetic character, the connection would be the real-life chimp's attack on a human, but Obama is notably cool-tempered.

But I can entirely understand if you don't want to think about this any further.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I apologize for being sententious; you wouldn't believe how many people discussing this don't actually know about that (or say they don't). And hey, I'm still awake, so...

One of the links is in the subtext of the insulting comparison between Black people and wild animals; in my experience, I'm not the only Black person whom I know tries to be careful about being visibly upset because we're likely to be seen as out of control the moment we show emotion. No matter how cool-tempered our President is, there are those who'll look at him and see someone little better than an animal, likely to burst into violence any moment. This image plays into that idea.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

That's astonishing, but I believe it. Obama violent? Maybe they think so. I think of the baseless rumor that persisted in the campaign that he couldn't speak well without a teleprompter, even after he'd coolly shot the breeze with Letterman for half an hour, and after Palin had proved that she's the one who couldn't ad lib a coherent sentence; and the ones that Michelle Obama, obviously a smooth professional woman to her fingertips, was accused of terrorist sympathies. And so on.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That's astonishing, but I believe it. Obama violent? Maybe they think so.

I don't know if there was anything calling Obama personally violent, but during the campaign there was all kinds of crap in right-wing blogs about "Obama Youth" (supposedly being organized on the lines of "Hitler Youth"). One SF writer who shall remain nameless speculated about whether the havoc wreaked by these youth groups on election night would be worse if Obama won or if he lost. So the linking of Obama with violence is out there.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

More Republican projection. It was, after all, Republicans in Brooks Brothers suits who rioted to prevent votes from being counted in Palm Beach County. And they claim Democrats are dangerous?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

One SF writer who shall remain nameless speculated about whether the havoc wreaked by these youth groups on election night would be worse if Obama won or if he lost.

Awww, you're no fun anymore.

(I but quote Monty Python for levity, but seriously, I kind of want to know who said that. At the least I might increase the stock of my local used bookshop.)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Watch your LJ email.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

So on and so forth indeed. *nods*

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

What got to me about the people on the mailing list where this was being discussed (yes, I'm the one with the disabled-comments post) was that they did know about the historical cartoon linkage of Africans and African Americans with non-human primates, and they still claimed not to see this cartoon as racist. One of their arguments was that the cartoonist hadn't made the dead chimp a caricature of the president, and that would have been easy to do by adding stick-out ears, so obviously he didn't mean it to be Mr. Obama. And the president didn't single-handedly write the stimulus bill, so the reference to the chimp as the writer of the bill didn't necessarily refer to him. (That, I think, is also the cartoonist's claim.)

I'm an old broad; this isn't good for my blood pressure.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's just crap. There's no way anyone in the newspaper business could *not* know the history, and there's no other individual as closely linked with the stimulus package as the President.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

If these people claimed the chimp wasn't meant to be Obama, then who the heck did they think it was meant to be? WTF else would the chimp have to do with the stimulus bill?

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

The cartoonist is apparently claiming that the chimp could represent anyone who had anything to do with the bill, that it's so bad that a chimp could have written it. I guess these folks are saying that's what they took it to mean. They're kind of vague about it.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Oh ... now I get it. Yeah, of course that's what it was intended to mean.

But listen ... if the stimulus bill was that badly written, that's nothing as to how badly written the cartoon was. If it needs to be explained, a cartoon is an utmost failure.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

They're kind of vague about it.

Tellingly vague, I bet. *smirk*

Anyway, I popped by here to say that I really appreciated your comments to me. :)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

It isn't even just a linkage with wild animals; it's specifically a linkage with non-human (no, that's too neutral, because what those who use this figure mean is sub-human) primates. If a cartoon depicted President Obama as a lion or tiger, the cartoonist might well have meant it in a neutral or even flattering way, but a chimp? He'd have to have been living in a cave on the moon not to know the implications of that.

[shikzoid.livejournal.com]

That bit of right-wing double-speak had me scratching my head 40 years ago. "We believe black people are not as evolved as we are. We don't believe in evolution." Kinda blew their credibility right there.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yikes! I never put those two things together before.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

At least one of the news stories I saw about it cropped the photo so the text was missing; the text shows the second cop saying to the shooter, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

That, to me, makes it unambiguously about Obama.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's clear to me. What I was trying to figure out was why they put him together with the chimp. Could it be only the nakedly racist association of apes/monkeys with blacks, and nothing more? Apparently. Yeeks.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

The president's press secretary settled for a remark to the effect that the NY Post isn't very newsworthy.

Oooh, SNAP.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Good point. As Bruce Schneier often says, "There's a reason they call it news." In this case, it isn't news that this cartoonist or this rag would be racially inflammatory/insensitive/both. But it seems to me that the combination of historical racial references, the president, and violence puts this one a bit over the line.