The NY Post Offends Again

Regular readers of the New York Post are used to their racist overtones and innuendos. After all, what can you expect from a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch -- the same man who owns Fox News? However, this latest incident may actually be over the top for even The Post. Unless you've been under a rock, you've probably seen this awful caricature, drawn by cartoonist Sean Delonas:


Since President Obama is the author of the current stimulus package, and a monkey is racist symbol, this is a direct attack on him and -- by extension -- African Americans in general.

Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network have called for a boycott of the paper. Barbara Ciara, the president of the National Association of Black Journalists, was quoted as saying, "To compare the nation's first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel."

At the prompting of Sharpton, protesters gathered outside of the News Corp building Thursday to demand an apology from the paper, and the jobs of Delonas and any editor who signed off on the cartoon.

Late Thursday evening, The Post released this statement:

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.

The opportunist reference was obviously directed toward Sharpton, who wasn't buying any part of the apology. He said, "They made what could have been a noble gesture ignoble by trying to attack people at the same time they're trying to apologize to them. It's not opportunistic to say 'I've been offended.' This makes it hard to take them seriously."

Also, Sharpton said that it wasn't until he raised the question of challenging the FCC waiver that allows Rupert Murdoch to own more than media outlet in the city that the paper started trying to play nice. He said, "They brought the rhetoric down and got a little more civil."

As for The Post's implications that this protest was payback for past attacks, Sharpton said, "They've done a number a cartoons on me over the years and I've never marched on them. They just don't get it."

I wish I could be surprised, but I'm not. The Post has never been a friend to the African American community, and this latest incident just solidifies for the world what New Yorkers have always known.