The New York Post’s Wednesday cartoon depicting two police officers shooting and killing a chimpanzee, purportedly parodying the Monday police shooting of a pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Connecticut after it mauled a friend of its owner, with the caption, “They’ll have to find someone to write the next stimulus bill,” has been challenged by Rev. Al Sharpton and others as a racist attack on President Barack Obama.
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Sharpton, who remained mum throughout 2008 during assorted racial flaps surrounding Obama’s campaign, spoke out on his radio show and on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Asking, “How do you connect what is not connectable?,” Sharpton called into question the sincerity of The Post’s Editor-in-Chief, Col Allen, who glossed over centuries of racist depictions of African Americans as simian, defending the cartoon as a legitimate political critique.
Even if Allen were to be believed, The Buzz wonders whether he’ll get a call from the U.S. Secret Service for publicly depicting the shooting of a tasteless caricature. If that cartoon were published by any known hate group, you can bet that a couple of agents would be paying a visit.
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