The New York Post issued a half-hearted apology for Wednesday's notorious stimulus/chimp cartoon which has inspired outrage among many critics and readers. Lets be absolutely clear, so-called apology not withstanding, the New York Post is a racist rag and a disgrace to journalism. They did not learn a damn thing from all the uproar and they need to called out for their bigotry and hatred. No amount of editorials or spin is going to alter what the stimulus/chimp cartoon really meant and we all know it.
The pressure has to be kept up and the staff at the Post have to be made to understand: that brand of racist humor WILL NOT BE TOLERATED !!!
The first decade of the 21st century is almost done and we still have "so-called" New York City newspapers printing this type of stuff during Black History Month ?!? And then we are suppose to be satisfied with a lame explanation and a few bait and switch words ?
Sorry, no sale.
It might not make much of a difference to a rich guy like Rupert Murdoch, but all the advertisers that buy ad space with the Post need to given fair warning...you guys wont be getting our money as long as you continue to do business with this disgraceful rag. Hurting the bottom line will definitely make an impression at the Post.
Who knows they even might have an revelation and actually come to realize that perpetuating hate and stereotypes is bad business and more importantly, not funny. And speaking of funny...
The pressure has to be kept up and the staff at the Post have to be made to understand: that brand of racist humor WILL NOT BE TOLERATED !!!
The first decade of the 21st century is almost done and we still have "so-called" New York City newspapers printing this type of stuff during Black History Month ?!? And then we are suppose to be satisfied with a lame explanation and a few bait and switch words ?
Sorry, no sale.
It might not make much of a difference to a rich guy like Rupert Murdoch, but all the advertisers that buy ad space with the Post need to given fair warning...you guys wont be getting our money as long as you continue to do business with this disgraceful rag. Hurting the bottom line will definitely make an impression at the Post.
Who knows they even might have an revelation and actually come to realize that perpetuating hate and stereotypes is bad business and more importantly, not funny. And speaking of funny...
Here is the apology:
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.
2 comments:
I am a 36 year old American Woman of Color and there have been days when even I look at old footage of the brutality of Jim Crow laws being enforced and I think to myself that those images are ancient history; but the truth is I know better.
Part of the issue is the inability of most of Americans Without Color to empathize with the issue. how can they when its not a part of "their" world? First I have realized that lots of younger Americans Without Color(ages 16-29) don't even know the long history of People of Color being compared to monkeys so they honestly cannot grasp what our "Uproar" is all about. They can't imagine how demeaning being thought of as nothing more than a well trained animal who can be used for brute strength with no more value than a jungle animal who can be gunned down when deemed dangerous can be. Now of the ones who do understand (Persons Without Color between the ages of 30 to 44 years old) what the "cartoon" was insinuating they are so far removed from it simply because it does not affect them, their experience with racism has come in watered down doses. Maybe a collegue With
Color had a drink order that was ignored during a luncheon or they actually were followed in a nice department store while shopping together and though this is racism it can be easily brushed off as not very important because those without color may only experience it a few scattering times in their life how can they grasp the day in day out struggle so let me try to explain how deep and ugly the problem can still be:
I come from a small town in West Virginia and I have experienced first hand some of the racism that is blatant, brutal, and very much alive. I'll give you a time frame. When we were all first being introduced to Madonna and MTV I was in Jr. High and listening to Thriller and enjoying Knight Rider on Friday nights and Miami Vice on Saturday nights. I was a cheerleader and on one more than one trip to rival schools we had to have police escorts because in Grundy Virginia there was a message spray painted on one of the overpasses: "Nigger don't let the sun set on your black ass" and in Iaeger West Virginia after we won our Jr. High and High School basketball games the families in these communities lined up outside of the gymnasium and screamed obscenities and racial slurs to a team of 12-14 year olds because we had four Children of Color on the team and four of us on the Cheerleading squad which was, in their minds, the reason we had won; because of our superior breeding to be more atheletic. In the early 90's when Mariah Carey first hit the scene and reality television was getting its start with MTV's "The Real World" and a new comedian named Jim Carey was getting his start on a show called "In Living Color" my brother-in-law was enjoying some time riding his four wheeler in the woods when guys (ones that I had gone to school with) chased him out of the woods while screaming things like "that's right nigger you'd better run" and "it's time for a hangin'" with hoots and laughter while waving the rebel flag. When he made it home and told us this story we knew there would be no point in reporting this to the police because that would play out like a scene in a movie about racism where the small town cop without color would barely listen would then make some small notation in a "report" and call the guys who committed the crime and tell them they have to stop because it takes up too much of his leisure time on the job to go "quiet the darkies".
Now this brings us to an older generation of Americans without Color (lets say ages 45 and older) who grew up with Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights movement. For some of these people these sentiments are part of their makeup and its moments like this when all their pent up resentment of the advancement of People With Color is allowed to bubble over and give them the satisfaction of "knowing" that no matter what People of Color have accomplished they are little more than a bunch of niggers who have been allowed to run free for too long, a bunch of well trained animals given too many freedoms and that anger, hatred and bigotry will sometimes be let out in "nothing more" than a derisive snort of laughter while reading this "just a cartoon" right before he or she picks up a scalpel to operate on a Person of Color...can you see the problem now?
Wednesday's cartoon in the New York Post is a depiction of racism, discrimination, hatred, and intergroup bias, just to mention a few. Launching a cruel attack against the President of the United States is unacceptable. Regardless of the justification by the New York Post, shooting a monkey has absolutely nothing to do with the stimulus bill and the economic crisis. Even in the form of a cartoon, this act of threat against the President may possibly border criminality.
I was totally disgusted, yet not surprised at all. The owner of the New York Post, who also owns Fox5, My9, and the Wall Street Journal have repeatedly offended all types of minorities, sometimes blatantly and other times subliminally.
The recent cartoon has finally caused an uproar and prompted action; however, what about the countless times when one of these media outlets were offensive to groups of individuals other than themselves.
About two to three years ago, I personally made a conscious decision to boycott the aforementioned. The New York Post does nothing to stimulate my intellect, Fox5 News (especially) has a plethora of racist undertones as well as the Wall Street Journal.
Granted, the media's goal is to find stories, sell newspapers, increase on-line traffic, and raise viewership, usually by any means necessary; on the other hand, I have the ablity to exercise my right as a consumer and patronize as I see fit. I choose to spend my resources and visit websites that tend to be more objective and balanced.
Hopefully this wake up call will raise awareness and is not just an isolated incident.
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