I meant, that if the artist wanted us to think of “monkeys on a typewriter” he went through a tortorous excercise to get there - and I don’t think he had that meme in mind at all.
When I saw the comic, I thought: dead monkey from that weird newstory - spending bill - ergo bill must have been written by a monkey, hardy-har-har. I never even considered the typewriter angle until reading this thread.
That said, I don’t think the intent was borne of racism, but rather of mediocrity. I just don’t get why this particular news story was co-opted for this opinion.
Nah, you must be thinking of somebody else. This is Al Sharpton we’re talking about.
I think it’s obvious at this point that for the next four to eight years, some people - political cartoonists, radio hosts, other unicellular organisms - are going to dance up to the racism line over and over again because people haven’t been so sensitive to it in decades and there hasn’t been such a good news peg for it in a long time either. It’s going to be something the rest of us need to tune out.
If the cartoon had shown a bullet-ridden chimpanzee with the caption, “They’ll have to get someone else to write for NBC now,” I don’t think there would be any outrage.
The fact that this made it past an editor suggests to me either that the editor was rock stupid for not seeing this interpretation, or foresaw the racist interpretation and just didn’t care. Controversy is good for circulation, perhaps?
Back in the mid 90’s, there was a screen saver program that featured a night time city scape, with back lit windows that would show different activities going on in the apartments. In one, a guys pet monkey misbehaves, and receives a spanking as punishment. There was also “pole climbing”, and “chicken choking”.
At least one talking head has pointed out another possible inference from the unfortunate cartoon — namely, yet another association of Obama with assassination. This cartoon is so dumb on so many levels. Unless it was indeed intended to lampoon the president, it has waaaay missed whatever mark it was aiming for.
The cartoon is racist trash. I don’t understand how it can be spun any other way. The stimulus is identified with the President, touted as his first major achievement. If you examine the cartoon, there is the beware of dog sign on the side. Dogs and police have a strong connection to the Civil Rights Movement.
If he had, there should have been a bullet riddled typewriter too, and there wasn’t
I think he just made a ridiculous connection between two unrelated things, and called it humor.
True…in order to get the full context of the outrage one must remember this key point.
To be sure.
If it was about the President then, by this logic, shouldn’t it have been in the White House? I think that the bullet riddled typewriter would have been unnecessary. However, if it WAS supposed to be Obama then I’d think putting the monkey in the Oval Office would have been a necessary touch…or at least putting the monkey in shirt sleeves or something else that would identify it as Obama.
Well, that’s different then. I mean, if a talking head pointed this out it MUST be true! After all, we have no typewriter as pointed out by Squink and the fact that dogs are associated with police AND civil rights and that Obama is black…QED it’s all about Obama getting assassinated!
Well, now that this has been settled what shall we all talk about next?
-XT
True, but he didn’t write it, and in fact the writing of the stimulus was very public as the two parties fought over how it should be made.
Interesting point, but I believe the most well-publicized photo of the chimp showed him pulling on a similar sign.
I don’t think that was the cartonists’ intent, but the coincidence occurred to me, too. One more reason this was not a well-executed satire. The meaning is pretty obvious but there’s too much baggage for the message to get through.
First thing I think of when you show me a bullet riddled monkey is that adorable little windup monkey that bangs tiny symbols together, then I might remember the organ grinder’s monkey. Sooner or later I’ll get to 100 monkeys banging away on 100 keyboards and producing the works of Shakespeare, but that’s not the first thing through my head.
I suppose that strictly speaking, there doesn’t have to be a typewriter, but when you skip that, and skip the other 99 monkeys, you’re getting into pretty dubious territory humor-wise.
I find it far easier to believe that this was just a bad joke, than that it was an obscure, but good joke, or a racially charge slam of the leader of the free world.
I certainly agree it wasn’t the best cartoon I’ve ever seen. And I concede that the million monkeys on a type writer might not have been the inspiration of the cartoonist (it’s what I thought of first and still makes the most sense)…he might have simply been using recent events to tie it in that way. But I think it’s a bigger leap to think that this cartoon is about Obama, racism and/or assassination. To me that’s a HUGE leap into madness.
I understand completely that the bill is associated with Obama. The chimp represents Congress, though: the public knows Obama supported a huge stimulus bill, but knows Democrats and Republicans fought over the makeup of the bill for some time. I think the cartoonist was saying the bill was so bad it’s like a chimp wrote it and tied it to the “mad” chimp that was shot yesterday. I don’t think it’s deliberately racist or assassination-related.
Hm…I think the chimp represents a chimp that Congress hired to put together the actual bill (‘it’s so easy even a chimp can do it!’) and that the cops shot it because of how fucked up it is. When I saw the cartoon (before this thread of course), that was the impression I got out of it. I can see it representing Congress (and it would be a very apt representation), but to me it’s a pretty big stretch to having it represent Obama.
I agree, Chefguy. It is intellectually dishonest to dismiss the historical precedence of equating blacks to monkeys or police, guns and dogs with the Civil Rights Movement.
The mauling incident in Connecticut is being used to deflect the true meaning of the cartoon.
There’s a historical record there, but there’s also a more plausible explanation. If there hadn’t been a chimpanzee attack in Connecticut yesterday nobody would be arguing against you. Please look at this photo.
:dubious: Without the mauling this cartoon wouldn’t exist.
I was careful to use the phrase “At least one…” because I suspect that others would follow. As of now, they include the National Association of Black Journalists and UNITY Journalists of Color.
To be sure.