Obama, Simian Controversy

The New York Post is in the midst of a controversy in America. The American tabloid published a drawing showing a police officer who had just shot down a monkey and says to his partner: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” For Al Sharpton, the African-American political and civil rights/social justice activist, it is a racist attack targeted toward Barack Obama.

There are caricatures that become famous. Everyone remembers the prophet Mohammad’s caricatures published in a Danish newspaper in 2006, which triggered the wrath of the Muslim nations. But, it’s a totally different drawing which caused a commotion on the other side of the Atlantic. In the columns of the New York Post, the cartoonist Sean Delonas published a drawing featuring a police officer who has just shot down a monkey. The man says to his partner: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

But for African-American minister Al Sharpton, political and civil rights/social justice activist and president of the National Action Network Association, the monkey figure represents something else.  “The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys…Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African-American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?” he asks before mentioning that the artist of the drawing has already been accused of racism. On the web, the debate is raging.

“A clear parody of a current news event”

At the Post, which belongs to press mogul Rupert Murdoch, they deny any accusation of racism. “The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy,” commented the conservative newspaper, before accusing reverend Sharpton of being an opportunist. A chimpanzee, which had attacked a woman, was killed on Monday.

During the electoral campaign, Barack Obama had already been pictured as the monkey from the children’s book “Curious George” by a bar owner in the state of Georgia. The case had caused a scandal. In July 2008, another caricature, this time published by the New Yorker and drawn by Barry Blitt, had triggered a controversy. The cartoonist pictured Barack Obama as an Islamist activist and his wife Michelle as an armed member of the Black Panthers.