February, 2009

New York Post "Chimpanzee" Uproar

by James May

Copyright 2009 James May • All Rights Reserved

On Feb.19, 2009 the New York Post ran a one panel political cartoon by Sean Delonas that caused a great deal of controversy across the United States in the media. The cartoon depicts 2 police officers standing over the bullet riddled body of a chimpanzee they had just shot and remarking, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." The source of the chimp image was due to a news story about a pet chimpanzee that had savaged a woman earlier that week on the east coast and been shot by police.

The source of the controversy was due to the fact that many Americans felt the cartoon was racist because it depicted Pres. Obama, the author of the stimulus bill to revive the nation's economy, as not only a monkey but a dead monkey. What bothered me personally about the situation was not the cartoon itself but how willing some people were, especially race baiters like Rev. Al Sharpton, to "see" what they wanted to see and how such people project their own unhealthy views onto other Americans as if it were a fact. It should be noted that the American media showed itself to be largely left leaning and unashamedly in support of Obama during the presidential campaign in a manner that was unpredcedented.

Rev. Sharpton has no ability to see obvious racism when it comes to the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright but takes one look at the Delonas cartoon and sees centuries of white racism rising to the fore with no problem whatsoever despite the cartoon's rather obvious thrust. By obvious thrust I mean that, all things being equal, I think the same cartoon would have existed under a white president. The existence of the cartoon would seem to be due to the rampaging chimp story in combination with the story of the stimulus bill and not because of a sitting African-American president. Others feel differently and obviously think that Delonas saw an opportunity he would not have taken had there not been a sitting African-American president. Their arguments for the latter are weak and require a bit of mind reading. The cartoon indicates that the chimp was used by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party as a whole to write the stimulus bill in question. If the chimp is supposed to represent a real person then there is no reason to suppose it was Obama rather than Pelosi or anyone else. My view is that the chimp is not meant to represent an actual person but only the chimp itself and therefore the intellect behind the stimulus bill. The other side of that argument is that the fact that there is a chimpanzee used and that President Obama is black is in itself a de facto argument that the chimp is in fact President Obama citing old stereotypes about black folks being depicted as monkeys.

It may be worth noting here that the N.Y. Post ran stories in June, 2008 about how Al Sharpton was shaking down large corporations for donations to his charity with the implied threat that those companies that didn't pony up the dough would be targeted by Sharpton for racist behaviour. Can any human being on this planet imagine Al Sharpton organizing a protest against videos showing imagined assasinations of George W. Bush? The more friction there is between black and white Americans the more money Sharpton makes and those unfortunate black Americans who line up behind him are patsies in a side show.

The Feb. 26, 2009 edition of Newsday.com reported that: "Sharpton, with City Council member Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), spoke to reporters in front of radio station KISS-FM headquarters in lower Manhattan, where they called for the City Council to review the Post's employment records because they questioned whether the newsroom staff represents the city's diversity." One can only wonder what the racial make up of KISS-FM is when it comes to diversity and how the radio station would feel if a white man tried to extort money from them on this basis.

There has been this type of sensitivity in the media before. In 1996 college basketball television commentator for CBS, Billy Packer, referred to a black player named Alan Iverson as a "tough monkey" on a live broadcast. Packer was raked over the coals for that one and later apologized. I guess critics would say that Packer automatically and unconsciously associated black folks with monkeys, others might say the remark was entirely innocent and had nothing to do with nothing.

In regard to the Delonas cartoon, it is interesting to me that the unabashedly race based New York Association of Black Journalists issued a statement with the following in their demand for an apology from the New York Post: "How do you think the Jewish community would feel about the use of rats in any depiction of them? How do you think the Italian community would feel about being generalized with mobsters?", this, according to CNNPolitics online in the Roland S. Martin commentary I write about below, for Feb., 18, 2009. In fact, Rev. Wright did that exact thing to Italians when he spoke of the Romans mafia-like treatment of Jesus in his infamous "garlic noses" diatribe and yet the Association stood squarely behind Wright during the furor over Wright's sermons and therefore squarely behind the idea of embracing hypocrisy on a monumental level because of their overt favoritism by skin color not to mention their absurd idea of organising an association of journalists based on skin color while utterly bristling at the idea of anyone who is not black doing so, even informally.

And while this controversy over the chimp cartoon is going on Eric Holder, the first African-American Attorney General, holds a press conference where he blithely depicts Americans as a "nation of cowards" because we don't talk about race enough nor interact enough socially when it comes to race. Parsing Mr. Holder's comments will perhaps deliver the mystery the chimp cartoon fails to deliver when it comes to who exactly Mr. Holder was talking about. Given the zeitgeist surrounding the election of Pres. Obama I find it difficult to believe that Holder was talking about white and black Americans equally. If he was, he could have perhaps suggested fewer groups such as the black caucus, the organization of black mayors, black police chiefs, black journalists and on and on. There's nothing like a group of professionals who self-segregate themselves and network by skin color and not only suggest that they are forced into such associations but then have the nerve to call white Americans racists if white Americans associate by skin color. Can you imagine a "White Association of Journalists"? It would never fly. The counter-argument would be that black folks need to create such race based associations because de facto white associations already exist albeit informally and so the need on the part of black Americans to create their own such organizations. My view is that 2 wrongs do not make a right and the time is long past for a black or white association of anything yet such organizations seem to be more popular among black Americans than ever; in fact, I find such organizations a disgrace.

Every large governmental and public organization of any note in the United States has black Americans as members; in fact, it is the law of the land that they be allowed to do so. It is necessary for me to belabor this obvious fact in the face of such overwhelming hypocrisy as comes out of the mouths and actions of organizations of black Americans who recruit with the sole priority being a person's skin color. I call any organization who recruits members based entirely on skin color a racist organization because it is looking out for people by skin color, the very supposedly hateful thing that created the desire for formal black associations. To me it's simply crazy to complain about racism on the one hand while formally incorporating and institutionalizing the very thing they are complaining about. Are these black associations not those who call for the de-institutionalizing of racism?

In a commentary for CNNPolitics.com for Feb. 18, 2009, Roland S. Martin criticizes the Delonas cartoon in a manner that is typical of how black Americans in the media viewed the matter. It is full of so much "doublethink" that I'm surprised Mr. Orwell hasn't jumped out of his grave with fists flying. Mr. Roland's commentary should be used as a paradigm for journalists on how not to debate an argument and how not to project your own foolishness onto others. If I were a teacher in Jr. High and a student handed in such a paper as Martin's I would give it a D-; Mr. Roland sees racism in his soup. His premises are faulty and disingenuous to the point of creating a commentary that is a lie. Elsewhere I discuss how a political cartoonist usually has a specific intent and does not purposefully create many interpretations. I use the Firefox browser logo as an example, a browser you may be using this very minute. Failing to understand a cartoon or logo, the fallback is to have the artist in question state what he had in mind and Delonas says right out that the chimp is not meant to be Obama. Despite this, Martin accuses Delonas of lying on this point. Even a child can parse a one panel cartoon and such cartoons do not lend themselves to over subtlety.

Martin defends his point of view with the past legacy in this country of insults to black Americans depicted as monkeys and by the fact that there is no sign around the neck of the dead monkey saying "congress" or "Obama". One might as well ask why there is not a sign on the moon saying "moon". Just because Martin needs cooking directions to parse a simple one panel cartoon does not mean the rest of us do. Martin sees the chimp as representing the backer of the stimulus bill, namely Obama. I see the cartoon as attempting to represent the level of thinking behind the stimulus bill, namely that of a chimp itself which Delonas himself confirms and not an actual human. Nevertheless Martin will not give Delonas the benefit of a doubt; Martin "knows" racism when he sees it and Martin "knows" that Delonas is a racist who made a cartoon with racist intent. However, Martin has no problem bending over backwards to give a positive slant to the sermons of Rev. Wright in such a way as make them unrecognizable; and Martin sloughs off Al Sharpton's racism by saying that Sharpton is the "black bogeyman to white America"; another perfect example of projecting one's false assumptions onto an uncaring reality. Roland S. Martin has a veil of racism before his eyes that is absolutely crippling; it is one thing to be blind and know it but to be blind and stumble around the world of rhetoric as if you have 20/20 vision is a sad crime. When it comes to signs, Martin may as well hang a sign around his own neck that says "fool" because the fact of the matter is that Martin sees racism everywhere he looks except among black Americans. To men like Martin, black Americans have some special dispensation when it comes to racism. Indeed, when one contrasts the disparate outcomes of the Don Imus firing and the incident on the Jamie Foxx radio show this special dispensation seems to exist. Imus referred to the Rutgers University womens basketball team as "...nappy head ho's" and a black woman who is a co-host on Fox's show called Myley Cyrus a "...white bitch". Had a co-host of Imus's referred to the Rutgers women as "black bitches" Imus may still have been fired and his co-host certainly would have been. I don't like Imus but fair is fair.

If you have ever had concerns about the dumbing down of America watch this panel discussion from CNN's Anderson Cooper's A360 show with David Gergen, Ronald Christie and Roland S. Martin as they discuss the Delonas/NY Post chimp cartoon. Gergen should know better as a journalist than to use his personal beliefs to open up a political cartoon to interpretation. Even Mr. Christie, who defends the cartoon as not being racist has it totally wrong as to why the cartoon is not racist. A proper read of a one panel political cartoon is not rocket science and yet you have 3 grown adults talking about it as if they were discussing what happen to physics on the other side of an event horizon. It's really quite stunning.

It is incredible to me that a man like Martin, who is incapable of parsing a one panel cartoon considers himself capable of parsing Delonas' innermost thoughts. Once again you have a black journalist accusing others of racism though he clearly doesn't understand that the racism is coming from the accuser, namely Martin himself and his world view that black Americans are somehow being rhetorically hunted. To say that this commentary is intellectualy bankrupt is not enough; it is the very embodiment of intellectual bankruptcy and all too typical of members of the black community who consider themselves members of a black American "think tank" while failing to have the ability to think, instead being driven by their own unthinking view of an entire country, driven by thoughts of race when in fact most Americans probably don't think about the subject much one way or another, certainly the white folks I know don't and neither do I. Mr. Martin has put himself in the unenviable rhetorical position of turning people into racists who arguably are not and defending people who are clearly racists of not being so, racists such as Al Sharpton and Rev. Wright. Why anyone pays money to a man like Martin who writes such childish rhetoric is a mystery for the ages. Without racism, men like Sharpton and Martin have no careers and so have a vested interest in keeping racism alive and well in America in 2009.

Many black Americans will respond to any accusation of reverse racism that it is not possible to be racist when you are the one oppressed, that you must be in a position of power over others to be a racist. I would respond that first of all it is 2009 and the oppression that black Americans speak of in this regard no longer exists and furthermore that no oppression in the true sense of the word can exist in a country with open borders. Secondly, racism is a language and not a position of power over others. Once one is allowed to say something positive about a group of people based on skin color then to hold a people in contempt by skin color carries equal weight, equal credibility; it is a double-edged sword. My third point is that such groups as the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan are marginalized lunatics with no power base to speak of and yet you would be hard pressed to find a black American who does not consider these groups as racist despite this lack of power which is part of their definition of racism. Let's leave such glibs arguments that excuse any black American from being capable of racism in the dust where they belong.

If Attorney General Eric Holder was directing his remarks mostly toward white America I can say from a personal point of view that I do not share his fascination with matters of race. Holder says during this press conference, "We, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial." Black Americans talk enough about race for the two of us as far as I'm concerned; one might say to the point of obsession. There is a difference between finding the topic of race boring and even unhealthy and being afraid to to discuss it. If Holder and black Americans want to talk about race all day, knock yourself out but don't criticize the entire country for not being fascinated with the world view of 12% of the population of the United States. I personally don't talk about race much outside of essays because I don't use a language where my world view is in any way defined by race. To me racism is indeed a language and not a position of power and I do not speak that language in my day to day life. It has nothing to do with cowardice but rather an unwillingness to define my environment by skin color. Holder's press conference is full of unfounded assumptions and projections onto Americans he doesn't even know about how Americans are simply moral cowards when it comes to race. Holder talks about "making progress in this area" as if I somehow can or should motivate black high school students in Mississippi or gang members in Chicago to not drop out of high school as if "frank conversations" about race is part of the solution to the problems of black Americans in the United States. The "frank conversations" necessary are, from a black point of view, frequently the same rhetoric about how it is the fault of and burden of, white America to fix the problems when in fact the real frankness necessary is little discussed among black Americans themselves. Just check out video of Tavis Smiley's State Of the Black Union annual convention to get a sense of his panel's ideas about problem solving and where this burden lies.

Here is a quote from Holder: “No matter how affluent, educated and mobile a black person becomes, his race defines him more particularly than anything else.” Besides projecting a self-fufilling prophecy I think Holder means that blacks in America will never get an even break in this country. Why? It seems safe to draw the conclusion that Mr. Holder feels that whites in America are racist. Can you imagine a white person getting away with saying such a thing? If it's okay for Mr. Holder to say such a thing, can I say that Mr. Holder's statement holds true for Mr. Holder himself? Holder is the highest ranking law enforcement official in the land and it is not in his brief to chide America for it's racist attitudes.

One can get a clue to the thrust of Holder's remarks during his now famous press conference where he takes "America" to task for "being a nation of cowards" when it comes to Americans discussing matters of race in the 21st century. Here is a link to CNN' online's presentation of the Holder video. Holder says, "One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country, one must examine it's racial soul." To me, this is a perfect example of Afrocentric self-aggrandizement wherein the entire complex history of the United States can only be understood by looking at it the way black Americans do. It is sheer arrogance to put 12% of the country's population on a pedestal out of all proportion to the true nature of the black community's real role in the history of this nation. When one points out this same thing in regard to black crime which truly is out of all proportion to the percentage of the population then it is evidently an entirely different matter in Holder's mind and that pedestal is chopped down in a manner exactly opposite to his rhetoric about a true understanding of America. Obviously, Holder has a slight problem of racial favoritism with what should and should not be understood when it comes to ideas about proportion. When it comes to "talking about things racial", it is clear from Holder's remarks that some things about black Americans should be talked about more than others. I hate to disappointment Holder but not everything that happened in the United States was about black folks; America does not have a racial soul, and Holder saying that doesn't make it true but rather reveals his own particular interests and background. To boil down the most sophisticated and influential culture that ever existed to the black American experience while putting a quarter of a billion Americans on the back burner is simply absurd, arrogant and the very definition of ethno-centrism.

It is one thing to have a perspective that is representative of one's unique background and it is normal to ask others at times if they would try and understand that perspective to better understand those with a different background. What Holder did was much more strident and demanding, even to the point of altering the very nature of history itself. America has been taken to task many times for indulging in an ethno-centric view of history and the same accusations have been made in regards to Western Civilization as a whole. But there is a difference between naturally gravitating toward what one knows best, that which has had a direct influence on oneself and insisting that that same particular perspective is important and even necessary for a true understanding of what's really going on. Read from the latter perspective, Holder's comments seem to lack an empirical or historical weight.

So let's forget about the Industrial Revolution, the race for space, WWII, the history of unions and 1 million and one others things in the history of the United States; let's condense it all down to how black Americans fit in irregardless of proportion. It must all be condensed to how it related to a small percentage of the population, namely black Americans who themselves admit that they were forcibly marginalized and took little part in the great movements in this nation's history. Holder says, "...this nation has still not come to grips with it's racial past..." I don't even know what that means but it's not a let's all celebrate American history moment and that's for sure. What in the world does Holder want white Americans to do in 2009 to "...come to grips with it's racial past"? I think most people have just a few other priorities on the table and this is the problem with men like Holder and Roland S. Martin. They are insistant that we all look at things through the lens of their own experience but when we want to do the same thing for ourselves that type of priority is forbidden; men like Holder and Martin want everyone but them and theirs to be all inclusive in their own outlook. That all inclusiveness as an outlook of the world is something that men like Holder and Martin steadfastly refuse to do themselves while at the same time advising it to everyone else; they hold on to their own provincial outlook while critisizing others for that exact same quality. This is a perfect example of how viewing life through a lens of race can be blinding in how it leads to double standards and hypocrisy. Their is nothing fair or impartial about Eric Holder or Roland S. Martin or Tavis Smiley or Rev. Al Sharpton - all men whose lives have been steeped in thoughts of race and who have unwittingly turned into the very thing they profess to fight against - proponents of racism. There is nothing color blind about such men and how they view the world, they are simply coming from a different direction and so are given free rein by apologists who cannot recognize racism when they see it though they discuss it all the time.

I mention Holder's remarks because they took place at virtually the same time as the Delonas chimp cartoon uproar and provide a kind of a context when viewed side by side. Also, Holder's remarks give one a clue as to why so many black Americans see the Delonas cartoon the way they do; everything is filtered through a lens of race and racism that has little to do with reality and Holder's own opening remarks at his press conference show to what extent black Americans are prone to distort their place in the day to day affairs of this country both for good and ill. My own rhetorical question to Holder would be: Do black Americans think of anything but black Americans? Is everything to be viewed through Jim Crow and slavery and racism and must I also share this point of view? Really?

In regard to Holder's opening remark, I will say that baseball players tend to view this country's history through their own lens with an emphasis on baseball's influence in their everyday lives. Union organizer's will tend to view this nation's history through the lens of union organizing and how that changed the nation's history, gay Americans filter America through their own experience; one can take such exaggerations with a grain of salt; it is entirely natural to do things like this but there is a time and a place and a context for this type of view and it is not the place of the 1st black Attorney General in the history of the U.S. in the administration with the 1st "black" president in the history of the U.S. to do so. Also, it is entirely outside the brief of the job of Attorney General to make such remarks as I stated.

Obama is not the president of black people and Holder holds no special brief in regard to black Americans. I found his comments offensive and racist. Furthermore, just because one has a special point of view about their country does not mean it is actually special and everyone brings their own lens to the table; the point is whether one thinks their peculiar point of view is special meaning simply different or special meaning better and more worthy of attention and "therein lies the rub" as they paraphrase. The point is exactly whether one should insist that others share that point of view as does Holder and this is where the problem lies for me. When gay Americans insist that the rest of America should share their own peculiar views on marriage even to the extent of putting those views into the U.S. Constitution then that is a problem. We should at least try and set aside what we know to be specific points of view and think rather about what is good and true for the whole while trying to be as inclusive to those who feel disenfranchised as possible, but not to the point of forcing the rest of American to share such beliefs. I'm sure comic book collector's would like to turn the Library of Congress into one big comic convention but this will not happen anytime soon. I don't want an Attorney General for the United States speaking from the point of view of a comic collector or baseball fanatic or black American. I want him to uphold the laws of the United States without regard to race or special interests.

It should come as no surprise that Roland S. Martin in a CNN follow up to Holder's press conference felt that Holder's comments were "spot on". My own felling is that it is not part of Holder's job to make such comments and that calling people cowards is not the way to gain cooperation or sympathy. Further, Holder's comments are simply his opinions and in my own opinion are simply not true but just a reflection of Holder's own provincialism in this arena which is exactly what he accuses us of.

I have my own point of view of the history of this country and it is not Holder's and I resent him saying his experience as a black American somehow overrides my own experiences just because he says so. I do not stand on a soapbox and pass wholesale judgement on people who lived under a totally different value system hundreds of years before I did. To put forth such rhetoric is as foolish as wondering why Cortes didn't march to Tenochtitlan in tennis shoes. Cortes was a hero to the Spanish and a mass murderer to the Aztecs. It is not a question of who was right but more of when they were right.

Holder's remarks and Roland Martin's remark about Sharpton being a"black bogeyman to white America" are dead giveaways in addressing the fact that black Americans in general tend to project their own near obssession with race onto white America, taking it for granted that white Americans not only also think alot about race but in particular think a lot of negative thoughts about black Americans when in fact white Americans in general giving very little thought to to matters of race is probably closer to the truth. In my opinion Al Sharpton is marginalized to the hilt in the thoughts of the average white American who shares none of Sharpton's racial double standards or fascination with the idea of race. The Delonas cartoon now comes into sharper focus as a paradigm of this divide, a gulf between how most white Americans view race as opposed to liberal and apologetic white Americans and black America in general. To the average white American, race is so far down their list of daily priorities as to be virtually non-existent. Few people really care about Roland Martin and Al Sharpton and their foolish nonsense and even fewer about Tavis Smiley's puerile annual State Of the Black Union clambake.

Since it is generally held in the black community that racism in America reflects the faults of white Americans even to the point of many in the black community saying that it is not possible for black Americans to be guilty of racism, it is hard for me to believe that Holder meant his remarks for blacks and whites equally and that in fact he was calling out white America. The question I have is this: how is one supposed to have an even handed dialogue about race in America when any criticism of black culture in America is invariably termed racist? Holder, like many black Americans wants a racial "dialogue" that is one-sided wherein white America is endlessly flogged and taken to task for it's crimes against blacks, past or present, real or imagined.

Another thing that has me concerned about the ruckus over the Delonas cartoon is the apparent inability of Americans in 2009 to parse something as simple as a cartoon panel. Either way you put it, you have a dangerous combination of simple stupidity with a worrying parallel to Orwell's concept of "Doublethink" as in this excerpt from "1984": "The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary."

Ironic use of the term "blackwhite" in the context of the Delonas' cartoon. Many people took it for granted that Delonas is a racist, a smug holier than thou attitude that seems to be an increasingly American trait in our new politically correct politics where people are convicted of an Orwellian "thought crime" by apparently having their minds read. My own interpretation of the Delonas cartoon does not require me to read the author's mind nor have a warning above the cartoon saying, "CAUTION: SATIRE BUT NOT AT ALL RACIST". To me, the offender here is not the Delonas cartoon but the eternally offended and hypocritical critics of the cartoon itself. The fact that so many black Americans were so willing to defend Rev. Jeremiah Wright's mountain of obvious racism as not at all racist but are equally willing to state with a certainly that the Delonas one panel cartoon is straight out racism with the spectre of white surpremacy behind it when it arbuably is not is apalling. Americans seem to make a big deal about free speech until that concept runs smack into something they disagree with. One thing I will say about the Delonas cartoon is that it wasn't funny or particularly clever and was also in bad taste but Delonas' cartoons are often in bad taste and insensitive; that's what he does. However there is a flip side to insensitivity and that is being over sensitive; when one listens to the level of rhetoric coming out of the black community about the Delonas chimp cartoon it is much more over the top than the Delonas' cartoon; one gets the feeling that we have 2 sides to the issue of the cartoon wherein one side is living in the year 2009 and the other in 1809 and someone needs a new clock.

One panel political cartoons are not hard to figure out; the author may create a cartoon that is murky but the artist certainly has only one interpretation that is meant. Think of the Firefox browser logo which is some type of a fox wrapped around the planet Earth; if you had never seen the logo before in any context whatsoever you may come up with a hundred interpretations of that logo. That would not change the fact that the designer meant for the logo to depict a firefox whatever that is and nothing else. It is the same with the Delonas cartoon. To me, the author of the stimulus bill in that cartoon is clearly meant to be the actual chimp itself - not Pres. Obama, not Nancy Pelosi and not the legion of lawyers who probably crafted the actual bill, incomprehensible and unreadable for it's sheer bulk if nothing else though the cartoon is obviously criticizing those very people. One can certainly argue that Obama is the father of the bill, the President and therefore the main author of the bill. That is not the point. The point is that the cartoon is meant to convey the fact that the bill was stupid enough to have been written by a monkey and that monkey is the one recently shot by police and not the President of the United States. If it's meant to be Obama then where does the chimp that was actually shot fit into the satire?

But let's say that the Delonas cartoon chimp was indeed meant to be President Obama. Google Pres. George W. Bush/monkey and you'll find more depictions of Bush as a monkey than you can go through. In particular, there is photo of a black artist standing next to a large painting he had made of George W. as a monkey. The caption under the photo reads: "Twenty-three-year-old painter Christopher Savido poses with his painting 'Bush Monkeys,' a portrait of President Bush, at the Animal gallery on New York City's Lower East Side, December 13, 2004. The portrait of Bush using monkeys to form his image led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests on Monday over freedom of expression. - (Mike Segar/Reuters)"

Will you hear an outcry about this painting of George W. Bush depicted as a monkey by a black man from the same people who cried so loudly about the Delonas cartoon? No, white presidents can be depicted as monkeys and black presidents cannot and evidently it is as simple as that. Will you hear cries about freedom of expression from the people who hate the Delonas cartoon? You will not because this is about political and cultural hypocrisy and stupidity and nothing else. If I was wrong then you'd find the people who hate the Delonas cartoon hate the Bush painting as well but they don't. It is a clear double standard to me which is invisible to those critics of the Delonas cartoon who portray themselves as champions of justice when in fact the thing they champion is hypocrisy. They'll argue that this painting of George W. doesn't show him laying in the street with bullet holes but I would argue neither does the Delonas cartoon since it is not Obama. In any event, there are plenty of imaginary assasinations of Bush on youtube and God knows where else; the sheer weight of references about things deprecating Bush was too much to go through on the internet so if there is no exact analog of Bush laying in the street with bullet holes in him it is not for lack of trying by those who disliked Pres. Bush.

Satire is not meant to be mistaken for the thing it satirizes and though satirical cartoons are often offensive they are meant to be offensive to someone, otherwise there would be little point to it. In the late 1960's artists like R. Crumb and S. Clay Wilson created some stories in underground comix like "Zap" that were so incredibly over the top in terms of being offensive to middle class Americans now and then that I have never before or since seen their like. I found them hilarious and so I was very forgiving of them. The underground cartoons were arguably child pornography, sexist, racist, homophobic and pure vulgarity. However, because they were meant to be satirical they were in fact not guilty of being any of these things and the same is true of the Delonas cartoon. A satire of pornography is not simply pornography but something else entirely.

Should it be okay to depict George W. as a monkey but not Pres. Obama because some people have an idea in their heads that black people are synonymous with monkeys? Obama is not immune to this type of satire over the top or not and some people have to develop a sense of humor or at least a recognition of the rights of the rest of us to have one. Political cartoons are almost always meant to disenfranchise the right or the left and I say what's the big deal? No surprise that the dripping irony of the idea of making it out of bounds to depict a sitting president as a monkey would hurt liberals more than anyone else since it is liberal websites that have such a great proliferation of photoshopped depictions of conservative political figures as monkeys, Hitler, prostitutes, etc. Political cartoons often exaggerate the features of those they depict and if black Americans want to enter this greater dialogue then they should innure themselves to this tradition without branding it racist and caliing on Jim Crow imagery from the past; welcome to the 21st century.

Political cartoonists are not going to change a centuries old tradition because some black folks don't want their ears or lips drawn in an exagerrated manner or because others in a past that no longer exists have at one time abused these depictions. What if Sean Delonas had decided not to publish the chimp cartoon because he felt that black Americans couldn't take it, that he "knew" that black Americans would overreact similarly to the way some muslims did to the 2005 Danish newpaper cartoons depicting Mohommed? Wouldn't that be a more subtle and insidious version of racism since it targets a people by skin color and basically says, "Let's walk on tenterhooks around black folks"; isn't this patronising a people by skin color and wouldn't that just be a more nuanced type of segregation? If I were Roland Martin and Al Sharpton I'd be careful what I wished for. Are muslims painted in an admirable light because the press is scared to satirize Islam for fear of a fanatical and violent response? By backing off from satirizations of Islam isn't the world press really saying that muslims can't be treated as mature and reasonable adults; certainly it isn't done out of some new found respect for Islam but from a dismissive attitude wherein Islam will no longer be considered in an inclusive light but rather excluded as a culture that can't play nice and which has no sense of humor about itself if the origin of the satire is perceived as being from outside Islam. This attitude is reflected in much the same way in the United States among stand up comics whereby black comics feel they have some sort of entitlement to chastise black culture but that no one who is not black has such free rein. If one truly wishes for that much discussed level playing field then trivial complaints is not the way to go about it but rather a way to be further disenfranchised albeit in a much more subtle manner. A manner wherein black Americans themselves are unknowingly contributing to a type of self disenfranchisement and subsequent patronizing attitude on the part of those who are not black though at this point in time this patronising attitude is so subtle as to be barely recognized as such. Is this what black America really wants? You have to choose your battles carefully sometimes and react to what is important. If black Americans with a voice in the media such as Roland S. Martin, Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley continue to complain loudly enough they will only succeed in effectively creating another form of segregation from American society at large and an insidious one at that since both black Americans and sympathetic whites presume that they are going in a positive direction without really having thought this whole thing through, but then subtlety has never been a hallmark of hypocrisy.

A level playing field is a term often used in discussions of race in America and with that level field comes the good and the bad. If black Americans wish to join the mainstream then when it comes to political cartoons black Americans must redefine themselves as a people who can be targeted in such things as political cartoons in the same way as everyone else without crying "racism" or organizing protests or threatening boycotts. With a level playing field comes a certain amount of responsiblity and it's not going to be all good. You take the good with the bad - that is a truely level playing field.

So let's say that the chimp in the Delonas cartoon is in fact meant to be Pres. Obama, dead or otherwise. So what? Does Pres. Obama have some special status I am unaware of, perhaps simply because he is black, or should I more accurately say half-black, half-white which in itself is an interesting use of semantics by black Americans and the American media. It is interesting because it is a nearly perfect depiction of Orwell's "doublethink". In the black community and the media it is a given that Pres. Obama is black, entirely ignoring the white side of his family; in fact Pres. Obama is every bit as much white as he is black since his mother's side of the family is wholly white; one really gets stuck here in the South African mud of a half century ago with it's insane definitions of race. Referring to Obama as black is an Orwellian example of literally looking at white and seeing black, holding 2 contradictory realities in one's mind at the same time and worse, doing so in a political context because it serves the people who do so to advance a political agenda based in politically correct nonsense fantasies about the nature of reality itself in regards to a world view. This is dangerous to say the least and is what George Orwell was warning western societies against in "1984" which is itself not a science fiction novel about politics but about perception and perspective. I'm sure that if you asked the critics of the Delonas cartoon if they thought of themselves as clear eyed they would answer in the affirmative but they are effectively conceptually blind and mired in a type of madness that reflects very little of the real world they live in. How else can one describe a political movement that approves of spending federal tax money to materially support anyone who can sneak into the United States, that approval arising out of a sense of political fear of not being re-elected, or accused of racism partnered with a total lack of resolve? Those who don't like the story of America seem oblivious to concerns of what they are replacing that story with as long as it is replaced and like the 1960s giving little heed to the dangers of a mindlessly reactionary view of history which throws out the baby with the bathwater. No wonder the fabric of society in the United States has come more and more to resemble an airport concourse more than it does a sovreign nation, where every cultural subset gives the impression of being legally enfranchised but that which created a nation which so many want to flock to. Ironically the story of those who created the success so many want a piece of is currently in disfavor, residing in a type of moral shadowland of apologetic shame and reparations imposed on it by political correctness. Leveling a playing field by using fair laws is something to be admired but that is one thing and protecting those who cannot or will not compete is another; one is an American traditon and the other a type of socialism that robs incentive from those who have helped create such a great country as America is to live in.

In a way what is going on in America today in certain circles is similar to the youth movement of the 1960s. Then too there was a reaction from a cultural subset who turned their back on the story of America and what had gone before though what is happening today is for totally different reasons and from a very different direction. One thing both eras have in common is the sense of tradition and common sense being under siege. In a way the political correctness so evident today in American politics is a direct descendant of the social and political movements of the 1960s but this is only part of the story. The other part is the rising hue and cry from those who don't like the story of America because of a feeling that they and theirs were not allowed to participate in that story. Such people mean to not only now participate in the story of America but to fundamentally alter that story, change for the sake of change masquerading as social justice but with an increasingly skewed view of the nature of reality itself, a view where everyone is equal in the real and not just legal sense of the term except for those traditionally in power in the past. A sense of revenge is in the air but that sense is misplaced in some instances and those responsible long dead in others. President Obama was elected president in such a political atmosphere, charm and political correctness combining to trump any ideas about experience and Obama's obvious Afro-centric leanings ignored or unperceived despite his long association with Rev. Wright's odious church and it's bankrupt racist philosophies and convocations. The Delonas cartoon emerged in an atmosphere of victimhood and ethnic self centeredness.

We are talking about a perceptual trap. I say a trap because people whose vision is so politically clouded as to render them effectively blind are not aware of it. The question becomes then: how does one know when you are perceptually capable of "seeing" as opposed to being hopelessly blind and biased? Part of the answer to that question is the Delonas cartoon because it's relationship to political correctness in the United States in 2009 becomes a paradigm for measuring bias versus plain common sense. The other part of the answer is that no one expects a type of perceptual fascism to come from the liberal side of the equation and so people are easily blind sided and therein lies the danger; one can prepare one's self from a storm you can see coming but it is the storm that creeps up from behind that is the most dangerous. It is the Republican conservatives who it is fashionable to compare to Nazis or racists and as endemically corrupt while ACORN practices corruption on a vast scale and as a matter of course without challenge from the Democratic party. You who are reading this right now can measure your own perception by your reaction to the Delonas cartoon and to the Bush-as-a-monkey painting.

In my view the Delonas chimp cartoon has nothing to do with race yet the black community in the United States believes emphatically otherwise as well as a large percentage of whites. Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union 2009 was held on Feb. 28, 2009 and I encourage you to look up the video of this event on the web to understand prominent black American's obssession with race. To get a taste of black rhetoric that is au courant try this section on allaboutrace.com. The 2 together make for some incredible reading and viewing to say the least and I would remark in passing that there are some arguments one simply cannot afford to win.

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