Fucking racist
Whatever, Xtisme. Clearly, you consider it baseless to view the cartoon as racially charged but your interpretation doesn’t render other perspectives unfounded, superficial, ignorant or a general public nuisance.
The chimp story just provides the opportunity for the racist thinkers to inject something like this into the public sphere and then when they get called on it, they can have a (what they think) plausible explanation.
The cartoon was written for, and appeared in, the Feburary 18 edition of the New York Post, in which the chimp story was front-page news.
As far as unfunny, the cartoonist has never been funny.
The chimp was indeed on the front page. And on the page just before the cartoon was … wait for it … Obama signing the Recovery Act.
Aside from all the other weirdness about the cartoon — appearing in a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, etc.); a dead chimp in a pool of blood, shot twice in the chest; cops in an urban setting (the actual chimp was shot in a residential area) — there is the inexplicable “BEWARE OF THE DOG” sign. It’s on a lamp post. What the hell is a BOTG sign doing on a lamp post on a public street?
So that’s something else for the defenders to explain away: the reference to police and dogs breaking up peaceful protests by blacks and their sympathizers in the 1960s. What? Just a random sign on any downtown city street? Like DEER CROSSING or something?
I didn’t see it, but now I am persuaded. Ugh.
Thats the easiest thing to explain. Look at Marly’s post 49:
Its not inexplicable. It ties the cartoon into the real event.
Sorry about the double post. Here is an article that has a picture taken right before the chimp was shot. Notice the beware of dog sign.
Kimstu, I immediately thought about black suspects too. Recent cases of police brutality are even more topical than the zoo chimp.
The fact that the cartoon can be interpreted in so many ways, by people who aren’t Al Sharpton, makes the choice to print this thing very unwise. I don’t know which is worse: a racist comic or a profoundly stupid one.
Except it is not more topical. The most topical issue of the day was the one which had the headline “Furious George” splashed on the front page of the newspaper the cartoon appeared in. According to the paper that was the biggest story of the day.
I knew immediately what the cartoonist was trying to do. A few seconds later I realized how stupid he was since I knew how people would either misinterpret it or choose to interpret it. Dumb cartoon, poorly executed.
I’ve had similar experience. On one board I frequent, which actually has a higher apparent population of conservatives than this one, the consensus was that the cartoon was patently offensive and it’s implausible that it got to the see the light of day without someone greenlighting the implications. I’m surprised so many people on the Dope think it’s just a lame joke.
Uh huh. An assassinated ape wasn’t enough to do that, I suppose.
Did you look at the picture?
I expect better from you. When you write:
And then are shown a picture that proves that such a sign was right there where the chimp was shot I least expected you to retract that part of your argument.
I will not. The cartoon urbanized the setting, obviously because negroes are urban. How you can defend this tripe is beyond explication.
My mind is boggling here. I can understand people seeing racist intent in the cartoon even though I don’t think there is any. The dog thing borders on the ridiculous, however. Since when are Beware of Dog signs urban? I saw them constantly while growing up in the suburbs and never see them living in the city. Connecting the sign to Bull Connor’s dogs is silly. If there was no “beware of dog” sign in the actual pictures of the chimp, yeah, I’d have to reconsider what the cartoonist was doing. But saying the real sign was included in the cartoon only so the illustrator could make some kind of backhanded racist comment doesn’t make sense at all.
Urbanized? What the fuck are you talking about? Have you opened any links? The picture that was taken seconds before the chimp was shot shows part of a yard, a street lined with parked cars and a post with a beware of dog sign. The cartoon shows part of a yard, a street lined with parked cars and a post with a beware of dog sign. Sorry to confuse you with facts. I don’t know what was in the cartoonists heart but don’t pull in bullshit like that.
ETA: if anything the cartoon was suburbanized. It appears to be a grass cover lawn. Not something I would automatically think of when I think urban. Coming from the northeast, when I think urban I think NYC.
They AREN’T urban, and that’s the fucking point. What’s the sign doing there on a city street? Either the artist is a terrible renderer, or else he has deliberately drawn a picture of Brooklyn.
Okay, I decided to take another look at the cartoon just now. I have to agree that it does look more like grass than a sidewalk. Perhaps I saw it through my prejudices before. I retract my points about urbanity.
Thank you for that. Also look at the link in post 88. It is a picture of the actual chimp right before he was shot, while he was trying to get into the police car to go after the cop that will soon shoot him. On the pole next to the police car is beware of dog sign.
Not at all. I acknowledged earlier in the thread that while I don’t see it, it’s fairly obvious to even one as stupid as I that OTHERS are seeing it differently. Because I disagree with the accepted wisdom however I’ve been called a moron, and idiot, clueless with hints that I’m really a closet racist, or at least support racist cartoonists for nefarious reasons all my own.
What can I saw? I look at the comic and I don’t see the connection between monkey and Obama and the bill. When it’s pointed out to me I still don’t really see the connection to be honest. When others have pointed out that monkey represents Congress I can sorta kinda see that if I squint…it’s tenuous but it makes more sense. When I look at it I see monkey representing the monkey hired by Congress to write up a bill that the author obviously thinks is so stupid and idiotic a monkey could do it, and I think of the million monkeys thingy writing all of Shakespeare’s works…but since THIS bill is so stupid it only took one.
YMMV, and it’s obvious that many in this thread agree with the (to me) knee jerk racial interpenetration. C’est la vie.
-XT