NY Post cartoon either stupid or racist

The best that can be hoped for is that the New York Post editors are guilty of stupidity, but even that just doesn’t add up.

A political cartoon appeared in the Post this week depicting two white police officers with a gun standing over the bullet-riddled money of an obviously dead money. The caption reads: “They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

The cartoon has set off a firestorm of protest, including in the digital world, where groups such as one on Facebook.com “Let’s join forces to boycott New York Post” are popping up, causing the Post last night to issue an apology of sorts:

Under a heading of “That Cartoon”, the Post said:

“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.”

The Post doesn't apologize to them, the report said.

The Post wants us to believe, I guess, that editors didn’t understand the racial overtones to the cartoon, given centuries of symbolism of black Americans being depicted as not-quite-human monkeys. They didn’t see, I suppose, how the linkage would be made to President Obama in the wake of his first major political victory in Congress, the passage of the stimulus bill.

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