The Uproar Over the Cartoon

Back during the election I wrote about the false sense of outrage that the right had after then Senator Barack Obama stated that you could put lipstick on McCain's health plan but it was still a pig. The right screamed at the time that Obama was making a sexist comment about Alaska governor Sarah Palin. It was a dumb comment then, and it's still a dumb comment.

I'm just as irritated by the people on the left who are screaming racism regarding the cartoon of the shot chimpanzee which appeared last week in the New York Post. For those of you who missed this story (Lucky you!), a cartoon appeared in the Post showing two policemen standing over a chimpanzee who had just been shot. The policemen look down at the chimp and one says to the other, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill!" Outraged critics have claimed that the chimpanzee is supposed to represent Obama, and that this cartoon is the worst sort of racism. Some have even called for an investigation into the hiring practices of The Post.

But let's get this straight: The chimpanzee is NOT supposed to represent Barack Obama! It's supposed to represent the writers of the stimulus bill. Guess what? That's NOT Barack Obama. He's not a legislator anymore. He's in the executive office now. The chimp is supposed to represent Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid!

Why shoot the chimp, you may wonder. Well, unless you've had your head in the sand, you're probably aware of the chimpanzee that was shot in New York after it mauled a woman. The cartoon is playing off of that story, suggesting that the stimulus package is so stupid that it was crafted by the shot chimp instead of by intelligent members of Congress. Come on, people! Don't you get it? The cartoon is saying that the stimulus package is stupid! That's all. It's not about Barack Obama at all!

Besides, if we assumed for a moment that the chimp WAS meant to represent Barack Obama, what would the point of the cartoon be anyway? That we should assassinate the President of the United States because the stimulus package isn't what we wanted? How dumb is that? It doesn't even make any sense!

And the idea that the New York Post and the creator of this cartoon are guilty of racism and irresponsible behavior is ridiculous. If they're guilty of anything, it would be of creating a cartoon that is, admittedly, able to be misconstrued. Two things make it this way: 1) The chimp story, especially when this cartoon was published, didn't have the national attention that it has now. I will be the first to admit that--if you don't know the story about the chimp mauling the woman--then this cartoon makes NO sense. 2) For better or worse, many people associate the President with the stimulus bill, even though he didn't craft the darned thing himself. Couple that with the fact that so many cartoonists give Obama oversized ears, and this cartoonist did the same thing with the chimp, and it's possible to see how people initially misconstrued the whole thing.

But all it takes is an explanation to clear things up. The idea that this is a racist cartoon really ticks me off. Get over your sensitivity, people. Is it racially insensitive? Without a doubt. But is it racist? No.

Maybe I'm irritated because I've dealt with this same overreaction myself. In the 14 years that I taught English, I taught senior level English about half the time, and in each of those years I taught the William Shakespeare play Macbeth. At the beginning of Act V, the character of Macduff says to another character, "Come, be not a niggard of your speech!" Similarly, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus states that "Nature must obey necessity, Which we will niggard with a little rest." I taught sophomore English EVERY year, and so between the two plays I came across the word at least a couple of times a year.

The word "niggard" sounds just like the capital "N" word but with a "d" at the end, and it means "stingy." But even though I would stop and explain the word and what it meant, on three different occasions over the 14 year period I had to take calls from angry parents, upset that I had used the "N" word in class. I would calmly explain to these enraged parents--who were both black and white, by the way--1) the meaning of the word "niggard," 2) how it is completely unrelated to the "N" word other than in sound, and 3) how I DIDN'T WRITE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! We were just reading Shakespeare! Despite that, though, in all three cases, after my explanation, the parents said something to the effect of, "I don't care about any of that! I still can't believe that you used a racial slur in class!"

When it comes to race in America, reason alone isn't enough to satisfy people who are sitting in wait with their hair-trigger indignity. And that's what this whole NY Post cartoon has reinforced for me.