The day after President Obama signed the stimulus bill, his first major piece of legislation, the New York Post ran a cartoon depicting the bill’s author as a dead monkey, covered in blood after being shot by police.
In the face of intense criticism, The Post‘s editor is standing by the cartoon, claiming it has no racial undertones, that it’s not about Obama, and that it was simply referencing an incident earlier this week when police shot a pet chimpanzee (an argument that pundits and analysts simply aren’t buying).1
It’s impossible to believe that any newspaper editor could be ignorant enough to not understand how this cartoon evokes a history of racist symbolism, or how frightening this image feels at a time when death threats against President Obama have been on the rise.
Please join us in demanding that The Post apologize publicly and fire the editor who allowed this cartoon to go to print:
http://colorofchange.org/nypost/?id=1672-704486
The New Liberator