Hail to the Chimp?

I'm sure there aren't many of you (if anyone reads this anymore) who haven't heard about this latest hiccup from the New York Post. The comic, created by Post cartoonist Sean Delonas, was published yesterday, and according the editor-in-chief Col Allan, was intended to parody both the chimpanzee killed in Connecticut and the fiscal stimulus bill. He says, quote;

“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. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

First off, it bothers me when people say "clear" in this way, I find it condescending. It's a one-scene cartoon, with one line of dialogue, so there is very little that is "clear" about it. When something is as ambiguous as this, it is open to interpretation, as are many satirical cartoons. It isn't as clear as 2 + 2 = 4, it's art, and as art goes, everyone has their own interpretation of it. Picasso's "Guernica" will mean one thing to me, and something else to the next person. Col Allan would have to have made an extreme oversight to not predict this kind of backlash from a drawing, given A) Obama being heavily associated with the bill, B) The comparison of Black people to monkeys and/or apes as a racist insult, and C) The tense relationship between NYPD (who is also offended) and the Black population of New York City. I mean, seriously, I find it hard to believe that Allan didn't consider any of these things at all when making a final decision. In my opinion, they wanted to be as edgy as they could, possibly competing with the terrorist fist jab cartoon the New Yorker had a while back.

What do I think? At first I immediately saw the racial subtext; partially because the first time I saw the drawing Al Sharpton had already said what he had to say. Looking at it again, to me it's more about how "stupid" the stimulus bill was (saying it could have been written by a chimp). After all, Obama signed the bill, it was written by Nancy Pelosi. Allan is right for calling Sharpton out as an opportunist; however he brought it on himself, by not foreseeing any of these things. If you don't like Al Sharpton jumping at any and every chance at publicity, don't have a potentially racist cartoon published in your newspaper. As I mentioned before, a cartoon like this is open to interpretation, and the Col Allan/Sean Delonas tandem gave Sharpton and his loyalists more than enough room to interpret it as racist. Part of an editor's job is to ensure that whatever message the paper as a whole gets translated properly, and if the New York Post's sales suffer as a result of it he only has himself to blame.