Mathpol’s Blog: Logic and Emotion

Here is the statement from Rupert Murdoch in Tuesday’s New York Post about “that cartoon”.

“As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.
Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.
Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you – without a doubt – that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.
We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.”

I believe him. After all, the main author of the Stimulus package was Nancy Pelosi, so the chimp, in the cartoonist’s mind, was akin to one of those monkeys I referred to in my earlier post. It was too “overtly racist”, if you will, to refer to Obama. However, the key phrase in Murdoch’s statement is “sensitivities”. Old racist stereotypes die hard, and they are still alive in many people’s minds.

First, the cartoon, by Sean Delonas.

Second, the response by the Post to the criticism it received.

THAT CARTOON

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy.
It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says.
It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.
Period.
But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.
This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.
However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.
To them, no apology is due.
Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Third, my attempt to logically analyze this.

I should point out the difficulties in trying apply logic to what is written in newspapers, let alone newspaper cartoons, but here goes.

The Post said that the cartoon was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.
Surely the caption gave the strong impression that the dead chimpanzee represented in some way the writer(s) of said bill. Now there’s that old joke about if you had enough monkeys on typewriters, one would do Hamlet. By the same token, one would do the stimulus bill. Is that where the cartoonist was going? One dead chimp to a lot of (dead) monkeys?

Then there’s the Post’s disclaimer that their apology doesn’t apply to opportunists looking for payback. So their apology only applies to people who were genuinely offended, as opposed to those who are always looking for ways to be offended by the Post.

But let’s ask ourselves, who in fact wrote the Stimulus Bill. Evidently it was written by Congressional Democrats and their staffers (the monkeys?), with guidance from the White House. However, at the end of the day, if one name has to be attached to the bill, it is that of our president, Barack Obama, who just happens to be an African-American.

Enter stage right the longtime racist identification of black people with apes of various kinds. So was the chimpanzee, and a dead one at that, meant to represent our president? If so, we should bring on the Patriot Act.

End of my analysis. To paraphrase Fox News, I pontificate, you decide.

PS. I’m sure you’re dieing to know where I come down on this. I think that, subconsciously, the cartoonist associated Obama with an ape, though not a dead one. Such associations should really be banished, even from humor. They just aren’t funny, not to mention disrespectful. The New York Post has plenty of other ways to spread its venom.