Racism is Alive and Well

[Spang]

President Barack Obama's picture was removed this week from a Presidents Day sign at the Peterson Air Force Base commissary after customers complained that the image did not fit the holiday commemorating the birthdays of past presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

The head of the local NAACP and a commissary employee say it was blatant racism.

The picture of the first black president accompanied a sign near the entrance listing the government-run military grocery store's operating hours on for Presidents Day. The store will be open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Employees took the sign down after customers complained that the holiday wasn't about the current president, according to the Defense Commissary Agency, which oversees the base grocery stores.

Rosemary Harris, president of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said something more sinister was afoot.

"It bodes poorly for the progress that we hoped we would see in this country; we might have taken one step forward but we see many steps being taken backwards," she said Friday.

A cashier at the commissary who did not want her name used said pictures of past presidents, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have accompanied the Presidents Day closure sign.

One customer, a military retiree, objected this year because of Obama's race, the cashier said.

"He said they're not going to have no black man on the window where he shops," the cashier said.

The commissary agency disputed the cashier's story, saying no past presidents have had their picture displayed with the holiday message.

They said four customers had complained that Presidents Day is to honor Washington and Lincoln, not Obama, causing the agency to remove the Obama image.

"The customers stated it is inaccurate to associate other presidents with this holiday and asked that we remove President Obama's photo from the flier," the agency said in a statement.

The commissary came up with a new, less controversial notice.

"The one presently posted is titled Washington's Birthday and has no photos," the agency said.

Harris isn't buying it, and said she wants Obama to again greet shoppers.

"To me it doesn't matter if its racism or politics," Harris said. "It's probably some of both."

The Gazette

[Xyun]

all those poor racists.



Get used to it, bitches.

[Winnow]

CNN, not Huffington Post! --> http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/16/buf ... index.html

Founder of Islamic TV station accused of beheading wife

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said.

Muzzammil Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, at the Bridges TV station in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, said Andrew Benz, Orchard Park's police chief.

Hassan was arrested Thursday.

His wife filed for divorce January 6, and police had responded to several domestic violence calls at the couple's home, Benz said.

Hassan went directly to the police station after his wife's death and confessed to killing her, Benz told CNN. Benz declined to give further details.

Attempts to reach an attorney for Hassan were unsuccessful, and his family didn't return calls from CNN.

lol

Dude must have thought he was back in the Middle East where you can do this to your wife and everyone would laugh it off.

[Xatrei]

Winnow - maybe I'm missing something, but what does anything in the original article have to do with The Huffington Post? Also, what does the article you posted (other than your own commentary, perhaps) have to do with racism being alive and well?

[miir]

Winnow - maybe I'm missing something, but what does anything in the original article have to do with The Huffington Post? Also, what does the article you posted (other than your own commentary, perhaps) have to do with racism being alive and well?

I was wondering that as well.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

drugs can kill you

[Spang]

This was published in the New York Post:



It's also on their website.

[Fash]

Why is that in the racism thread instead of the stimulus thread? The bill was written by congressmen and senators.

[Spang]

Why is that in the racism thread instead of the stimulus thread? The bill was written by congressmen and senators.

Maybe because it's racist?

[Fash]

Why is that in the racism thread instead of the stimulus thread? The bill was written by congressmen and senators.

Maybe because it's racist?

Is it? I disagree...

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I would not doubt they consider being a democrat as a protected status

[Xyun]

So you guys are arguing that the monkey is not necessarily Obama, nor that whoever the monkey represents should not necessarily be shot?

[Bojangels]

The monkey is the chimpanzee that attacked the woman in Stamford CT, and the police officers who came to her rescue had to shoot and kill it.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/17/chimp. ... index.html

I don't think the second cartoon is racist.

[Xyun]

I guess that was the same monkey that wrote the stimulus bill.

[Canelek]

Yup. Extremely racist with weak crazed chimp theme.

Without a caption -- crazed chimp that attacked the person
With caption -- racist asshat

[Bojangels]

There's tons of jokes out there about monkeys throwing crap at a dartboard or mashing on keyboards to come up with ideas. I don't think all monkey jokes should be off limits because our President is black. I would want to see some of the guys other cartoons before I accused him of being a racist.

[Canelek]

Just my reaction is all. I have no way to guage intent of said artist without knowing him...

[Xatrei]

Unless I'm mistaken, the cartoonist is a conservative, and he (and the paper) claim that he was just drawing a parallel between a wild, out of control congress and a wild, out of control animal. This strikes me as a convenient excuse to claim after the fact, so color me dubious on this one. Being unaware of a history of racist themes from this cartoonist, however, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that his intent here was not racist. Regardless, I still think that both he and whoever approved this for publication are big idiots. One would think that they might be vaguely aware of racial sensitivities and the potential for misinterpretation that such a piece might provoke, the artist's intent not withstanding. Further, even if you take race away from it, I still think it's in bad taste and somewhat troubling to equate congressional democrats with an animal that needed to be gunned down.

I'll accept, albeit with a little suspicion, the claim that no racial insensitivity was intended, but it's still stupid and in poor taste.

[Bojangels]

http://gawker.com/5155855/ten-masterpie ... an-delonas

I just googled the guy, seems like he's a huge douchebag.

[Xatrei]

Heh - that's what I get for not taking a few moments to look deeper into this guy's history first. This guy is an epic asshole. I take back what I said. Given his history, I'm inclined to think that this homophobic racist deliberately produced a cartoon with racist overtones, but left it vague enough so that he can deny it and claim to be the victim of a liberal witch hunt.

[Canelek]

Yeah, I agree.

Now, I am not a politically correct type of person, but any sort of intentional use of overtly racist images certainly makes me see the originator as a racist cocksucker. Swasticas, nooses, monkeys, etc that have immediately identifiable and obvious meanings are pretty much what they are. It isn't about "PC"--it is about simple decency and responsible journalism.

[Keverian FireCry]

If it's about Obama it doesn't make since (since he didn't write the bill).

It also doesn't make since if it's about the congress, as the congress is not 1 person(or monkey). If the cops had shot a room full of monkeys...then it would make since, it wouldn't be misconstrued as an attack on a individual (Obama) and it might be somewhat funny.

I don't think it's racist, but I do think he knew it would be easily misunderstood and lead to publicity. In the end it will not hurt his career, but it will reflect badly on those who made such a big deal about it.

Either way, not a funny cartoon and not worth the media coverage it got.

[Truant]

sense.

Also, the public doesn't blame congress for the mistakes that occur during a presidency (even if they are congress' fault), they blame the president.

[Spang]

The New York Times

Chimp-Stimulus Cartoon Raises Racism Concerns

Updated, 9:49 p.m. | Gov. David A. Paterson, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, the Rev. Al Sharpton and others expressed concern on Wednesday morning over an editorial cartoon in The New York Post that showed a police officer telling his colleague who just shot a chimpanzee, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Critics said the cartoon, drawn by Sean Delonas, implicitly compared President Obama with the primate and evoked a history of racist imagery of blacks. The chimpanzee was an apparent reference to the 200-pound pet chimpanzee that was shot dead by a police officer in Stamford, Conn., on Monday evening, after it mauled a friend of his owner.

Speaking at a conference of the New York Academy of Medicine on Wednesday morning, Mr. Paterson said that while he had not seen the cartoon, he believed that The Post should explain it. Given the possibility that some people could conclude the cartoon had a racial subtext, Mr. Paterson said the newspaper needed to clarify its meaning.

“It would be very important for The New York Post to explain what the cartoon was intended to portray,” Mr. Paterson said in response to a question about whether the cartoon’s depiction of a monkey was racist, as Mr. Sharpton has suggested. “Obviously those types of associations have been made. They do feed a kind of negative and stereotypical way that people think. But I think if it’s enough that people are raising this issue, I hope they would clarify.”

Senator Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said in a statement: “I found the Post cartoon offensive and purposefully hurtful. This type of cartoon serves no productive role in the public discourse.”

City Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr., a Queens Democrat, called for a boycott of the newspaper. “To run such a violent, racist cartoon is an insult to all New Yorkers,” he said in a statement. “This was an unfortunate incident in which a human being was seriously injured- not an opportunity to sling dangerous rhetoric. It is my belief that The New York Post owes an immediate apology to this city for demonstrating such terrible judgment and insensitivity.”

Mr. Comrie urged New Yorkers to “demonstrate their displeasure with the New York Post by writing letters to their advertisers and simply stop purchasing a publication that clearly has no respect or sensitivity for people of color.”

On Wednesday evening, the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, also weighed in, saying:

My office has received complaints about this so-called cartoon, and I can see why. If its disturbing connection to reprehensible racial stereotyping was unintentional, it just proves once again how disconnected The Post is from New York City and its residents. And for such a weak joke? There’s no excuse. The ‘editors’ overseeing such content should be ashamed—and held accountable. The Post is always quick on the attack, so now we ask that they do the right thing and apologize to all who were offended by this tasteless cartoon.

A newsroom employee at The Post, who spoke on condition of anonymity because employees were not permitted to comment on the matter, said its newsroom received many calls of complaints on Wednesday morning after the publication of the cartoon. “Every line was lit up for several hours,” the employee said. “The phones on the city desk have never rung like that before.” Many Post staff members were dismayed by the cartoon, the employee added.

The cartoon was on Page 12 of Wednesday’s edition, next to the paper’s Page Six gossip column. On Page 11, the reverse side, was a photograph of President Obama signing the stimulus bill into law in Denver.

Mr. Sharpton, who has been an unflattering subject in cartoons drawn by Mr. Delonas in The Post, said in a statement on his Web site:

The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best, given the racist attacks throughout history that have made African-Americans synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual inference to this form of racism when, in the cartoon, the police say after shooting a chimpanzee, “now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

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 whether the Post cartoonist was inferring that a monkey wrote it?

In a statement, Col Allan, editor in chief of The Post, denied Mr. Sharpton’s assertion that the cartoon was “racially charged.” Mr. Allan said:

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.

A 2001 cartoon by Mr. Delonas depicted Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president who was seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor that year, kissing the buttocks of Mr. Sharpton — a depiction that was widely criticized as demeaning, and even racist.

In a phone interview, Mr. Sharpton said he planned to hold a protest outside The Post’s Midtown offices at noon on Thursday.

“What does shooting a chimpanzee have to do with a stimulus bill?” Mr. Sharpton said. “This raises all the racial stereotypes we are trying to get away from in this country.”

He added: “I’m not speaking on behalf of the president or the chimpanzee. I‘m speaking on behalf of the offended African-American community.”

Mr. Delonas has drawn ire from a number of groups for past cartoons in The Post. In 2006, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation denounced a cartoon of his that showed a man carrying a sheep wearing a bridal veil to a “New Jersey Marriage Licenses” window, a reference to the State Supreme Court’s ruling that year requiring the state to grant same-sex couples the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples through civil unions.

Andrew Rojecki, associate professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-author of “The Black Image in the White Mind” (University of Chicago Press, 2000), a study of racial attitudes and their relationship to mass media content, said he found the cartoon deeply troubling.

“Of course I would say it’s racist,” Professor Rojecki said in an interview. “There’s no question about it.”

He added, “The cartoonist, whether he did this consciously or not, was drawing upon a very historically deep source of images about African-Americans that African-Americans do not have a lot of control over.”

Such images are harmful on a number of levels, he said. “Even people who do not harbor deep-seated prejudices, because they have stereotypes deeply embedded in their consciousness, may react unconsciously when those associations are triggered,” he said.

Professor Rojecki rejected Mr. Allan’s assertion that the cartoon was devoid of racial content. “It strains credulity to imagine that there is any association between a chimpanzee that was shot because it had attacked someone and a bill that has successfully passed through Congress,” he said. “It makes no sense. What possible explanation could there be?”

Jan Nederveen Pieterse, a professor of global studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of “White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture” (Yale University Press, 1995), said, “I agree the cartoon is racist, without a doubt.”

Professor Pieterse, who is Dutch, said that portrayal of non-Westerners as primates became well-established in both the United States and Europe in the late 19th century, and has affected not only blacks, but also the Irish and Chinese, for example.

“It’s absolutely outrageous,” he said of the cartoon, “and I think people are concerned because it sets a nasty, mean, very aggressive tone. You can’t get any lower.”

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I got the cartoon's meaning and did not infer race from it at all. Of course I use the euphemism "monkeys" along with "clowns" to describe quite a wide array of idiots that I deal with. The stimulus bill was so bad that is appears to have been writeen by monkeys.

On the other hand....there is a resemblance of BO to a film great

[Spang]

Comparing Barack Obama to a monkey?

You're a fucking racist, but that's no surprise, really.

[Leonaerd]

If Obama looked like a cartoon, it would have to be the doctor from Sealab 2021.

[Keverian FireCry]

The most fucked up element of all of this is that the media has been making a big deal about the possible racist undertones of the cartoon...

...Yet noone seems to give a shit that the chimpanzee brutally mauled a woman's face and body; tearing out her eyes and nose, and ripping her fingers from their sockets...and someone decided to make a political cartoon about it.

So funny. Haha.

[Boogahz]

I was thinking about the old test of whether or not a monkey could write Shakespeare when I first saw it :/

[Winnow]

Wait a sec....so Bush gets compared to a monkey his entire 8 years and you people are complaining about this? What a bunch of pussies!

[masteen]

I believe it was 1000 monkeys, 1000 typewriters, 1000 years and was something to do with the improbable becoming inevitable given a large enough sample size.

And while the cartoon wasn't that funny, how fucking thin skinned have we become as a country since this gem was filmed? Racism is funny, not in and of itself, but because of the ignorant shitbags who still believe in it.

[Gzette]

are you saying racism doesn't exist?

[Dregor Thule]

The most fucked up element of all of this is that the media has been making a big deal about the possible racist undertones of the cartoon...

...Yet noone seems to give a shit that the chimpanzee brutally mauled a woman's face and body; tearing out her eyes and nose, and ripping her fingers from their sockets...and someone decided to make a political cartoon about it.

So funny. Haha.

She kept a chimpanzee as a pet and gave it free reign, plus it had gotten into at least 1 problem situation before. While it sucks, she's not without blame. I felt more sympathy for the chimpanzee getting shot.

As for the racist debate, cartoon was racist, kilmoll is racist, and winnow is still a moron. VV keeps bringing the awesome, woo!

[cadalano]

i'm pretty sure the woman that the chimp attacked didn't have anything to do with his domestication. was just a friend of the owner iirc

[Spang]

STATEMENT FROM RUPERT MURDOCH

By RUPERT MURDOCH

Last updated: 3:16 AM February 24, 2009

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you - without a doubt - that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

The Source

[Canelek]

I think Rubert and A-Rod have the same apology writer.

[Dregor Thule]

i'm pretty sure the woman that the chimp attacked didn't have anything to do with his domestication. was just a friend of the owner iirc

You're correct, my mistake. The friend however was there to help catch the escaped chimp. Still, that does change my opinion.

[Xatrei]

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/mail ... ogy-people

You really just have to question the mental competence of someone in this position that thinks it's a good idea to forward something like this to people.