NY cartoon appears to link Obama to dead chimp

If they want to make a connection with Bush or President Obama with the characteristics of a chimp then I would suggest that they do a little research on chimps.

You may be deceived into believing that chimps are adorable, cartoonish little beings that are easily trained, controlled and are docile.

You would be wrong. Chimpanzees are extremely intelligent animals and on any given occasion, just because they feel like it, will do what they please instead what is expected of them.

They can also become extremely vicious and can turn on an owner and tear them to bits without prejudice; then go back to eating their banana.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
Again...how is that not a contradiction?

Maybe I should have more correctly stated that it represented the author of the bill. I don't know who authored it, do you? Maybe it literally was a chimp.. Chimps are able to use sign language and a crude form of keyboard for communication purposes. I even read one article that said chimpanzees are even capable of practicing deception..

Originally posted by LLoyd45
Maybe it literally was a chimp..

And my thoughts that a chimp could possibly be representative of Obama or his Administration is a bigger stretch than assuming an actual chimp wrote the stimulus bill...how?

The only association to Obama I made to the cartoon was from the title.
Had I not read the title, but had seen the cartoon prior to any mention of Obama, Obama would never have entered my mind.

It is a political cartoon, after all, and meant to stir controversy, not humor, as in the funny papers.

Originally posted by MemoryShock

Originally posted by LLoyd45
Maybe it literally was a chimp..

And my thoughts that a chimp could possibly be representative of Obama or his Administration is a bigger stretch than assuming an actual chimp wrote the stimulus bill...how?

There was no mention of Obama in the cartoon, only a chimp. I tend to think more concretely while you tend to abstract a bit more.

You seem to be making a subconscious mental connection between Obama and his administration with apes.. Why is that?

reply to post by pyrytyes


What is the title? I don't believe I have seen that yet.

reply to post by Irish M1ck


I think it refers to the title of the thread.

Normally, the daily editorial cartoons don't carry a title.

Source

Here's a link to the actual cartoon in the actual paper; the link will only show this cartoon today. The cartoons change daily at this link.



[edit on 2/18/2009 by skeptic1]

reply to post by Djarums


Replying to the first page.
I don't think the problem is linking a specific person to being a monkey or chimp, but the fact that it's done towards an african american.
The implication has nothing to do what so ever with his appearence other than... he's a black man. In other words... they are calling a black man a chimp because he's black.

Bush was called a monkey because he acted like one. A playful naughty monkey that thought the world was his playground.

I would be surprised if this doesn't stir up an outrage...

reply to post by flice


It is already starting to....

``At its most benign, the cartoon suggests that the stimulus bill was so bad, monkeys may as well have written it,'' columnist Sam Stein wrote in the liberal-leaning Huffington Post. "Most provocatively, it compares the president to a rabid chimp. Either way, the incorporation of violence and (on a darker level) race into politics is bound to be controversial.''

Stein's article drew hundreds of comments on the Huffington Post Web site, with many calling the cartoon racist and insensitive. Some urged a boycott of the Post and the companies that advertise with it while others denounced what they called the Republican slant of the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.

Hamilton Nolan wrote on Gawker.com that according to a tipster who was not identified, the Post was receiving threatening phone calls about the cartoon.

Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the New York Post, released a statement defending the work.

"The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.''

Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.''

Source

Originally posted by LLoyd45
There was no mention of Obama in the cartoon, only a chimp. I tend to think more concretely while you tend to abstract a bit more.

There are some schools of thought that tend to indicate a mental inadequacy to those who don't think beyond the literal aspects of a metaphor...

These functions include -Snip-, metaphors and indirect requests, and the generation/comprehension of emotional prosody. Behavioural evidence indicates that patients with typical schizophrenic illnesses perform poorly on tests of these functions, and aspects of these functions

Right hemisphere language functions and schizophrenia: the forgotten hemisphere?

While I personally am not inclined to assume as such in your direction, your insistence on a literal interpretation suggests to me that you are just being obtuse...either intentionally or not.

This is my last post in this thread.

This is what its come to. The most enlightened web site I have ever found has dedicated 5 pages discussing what a dead chimp represents? Media is everywhere, blogs around the nation are going crazy over this, over this? This thread is about as nuts as the one about defining hate speech on ATS.

Its a cartoon. Some people thought it was funny, some thought it was offensive. Who the hell cares? Is Lucy really an evil feminist who thinks all men should die due to the fact she always pulls the football as Charlie tries to kick it?

Come on, both sides. Its one persons drawing of a message he wanted to convey. He is not a saint, nor is he the devil. Its a cartoon.

Just imagine if it would have had a turban on its head, then we could really go crazy.

reply to post by salchanra


Add a bomb to that turban

Sry, couldn't resist.

Originally posted by skeptic1
I did not vote for Obama, but even I think this cartoon goes a bit too far. The implication is clear.

No, what is clear is that whoever wrote the so-called stimulus package (more properly, the pork-barrel-on-parade package) has all the economic understanding of a chimpanzee.

We know that Obama did not write the stimulus bill, and most likely he didn't even read it, although he rushed to sign it into law. Hardly anyone in Congress read it, either, and only a very few can tell you what's in there.

So the cartoon is obviously directed at the 60 or so members of Congress who actually penned the stimulus bill. That is clear.

If there is any racist intent, it is entirely in the minds of the accusers, those who have no better rebuttal than to play the race card.

— Doc Velocity

[edit on 2/18/2009 by Doc Velocity]

reply to post by Irish M1ck


I was referring to the thread title.

Sorry for the confusion.

reply to post by Doc Velocity


Don't put words in my mouth. Thank you.

I mentioned nothing about race in this issue. My reference to "implication" was the offensive nature of the cartoon. I don't care if the author of the cartoon was using the monkey to represent Congress or Obama....implying that it is either is offensive and totally uncalled for, especially when the representation is laying dead on the ground with bullet holes in it.

You don't know if it's supposed to represent Obama? C'mon. The lengths at which some on this thread are going to in order to tap dance around the obvious and play coy w/ the issue is astounding. The level of denial is extraordinary.

Bottom line: Obama=Stimulus package; Stimulus package=Obama. To see him portrayed as a monkey is racist. It is different when you are portraying a black man as a monkey. Then on top of that to show him lying there in a pool of blood just spirals into the darkest depths of offensive.

Does it work both ways? Yes. I despised Bush, but you better believe when I saw that "Shoe Incident" in Iraq I was boiling mad.

Promoting the murder of anyone is offensive. Then take into account the very real, numerous and significant threats to his life that Obama is having to endure and it becomes plain old sloppy journalism.

There are probably more than a few white supremacists making a poster out of this cartoon as we speak.

And in my opinion, that definition of treason fits the Republican party to a T right now. In fact, it has fit them to a T for the past eight years.

Originally posted by skeptic1
Don't put words in my mouth. Thank you. I mentioned nothing about race in this issue. My reference to "implication" was the offensive nature of the cartoon. I don't care if the author of the cartoon was using the monkey to represent Congress or Obama....implying that it is either is offensive and totally uncalled for, especially when the representation is laying dead on the ground with bullet holes in it.

It's all fair game, missy. Democrat hacks set the standard by mutilating the Bush Administration in various gruesome ways for 8 long years. Get used to it.

— Doc Velocity

reply to post by Doc Velocity


I'm a conservative, thank you very much.



Just because I find the cartoon offensive doesn't make me a liberal.

reply to post by Irish M1ck


That was what I thought of when I saw it. I'm not sure why it's being connected to Obama since he didn't actually write the stimulus bill, Congress did.


Edit: Should have read the rest of the thread prior to posting. I can see how it could be considered offensive, but I highly doubt the cartoonist was calling for anyone to literally be shot and killed over the stimulus bill. I could be wrong, since I don't know them, but it is a political cartoon. They are supposed to cause a reaction.

[edit on 18-2-2009 by Jenna]

Originally posted by MemoryShock
There are some schools of thought that tend to indicate a mental inadequacy to those who don't think beyond the literal aspects of a metaphor...

That may be true is some cases, but I assure you it's not in mine.

On the other hand, too much abstraction leads individuals to drawing inaccurate conclusions regarding another person's words or intent. Sometimes a rose is just a rose..

While I personally am not inclined to assume as such in your direction, your insistence on a literal interpretation suggests to me that you are just being obtuse...either intentionally or not.

This is my last post in this thread.

I appreciate your giving me the benefit of a doubt, but there's no obtuseness on my part intentionally or unintentionally. We simply have a difference of opinion.

[edit on 18-2-2009 by LLoyd45]