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

[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. :)