Jawbone writes:

The only way to make that connection, as I see it, is the long and ugly use in this country, and others, of monkey cartoons and caricatures to represent black people

Honestly.

It's as if we were looking at a cartoon from Der Sturmer -- not that the NY Post is in that league -- and we were arguing, well:

The only way to make that connection, as I see it, is the long and ugly use in this country, and others, of monkey cartoons hooked noses and caricatures to represent black people Jews.

Yep, the "only way" indeed.

I'm all for evidence and reasoning, but what a lot of the comments on this post look like to me is an attempt to rationalize some very ugly facts away: Yes, Obama is black, and yes, there are racists who hate him for that, and (I suppose) all that hate may play out in some really bad ways, dog forbid. Cartoonists deal in the kind of visual cliche exemplified in this cartoon; it's their stock in trade. This one ought to be a no-brainer.

And now to VL's points. He writes:

1. That the current-events context of the marauding chimp couldn't possibly be the intended context

Haven't you ever heard of appropriating a "news hook" for a point unrelated to the original story? Happens all the time. I do it in the "Science for Republicans" posts I run every so often. It's an entirely standard technique.

2. That Obama is the author of the stimulus bill, which he isn't

He may not "write" the bill (the cartoon's word), but he's certainly the one claiming victory or defeat at the passage of the bill; in that sense, it's "Obama's bill" in the narrative. Somehow, I think that's a more salient point for the average reader of the Post than "How a Bill Becomes a Law" (especially if they're of the authoritarian mindset).

3. That the artist and paper are not merely stupid and racist, they're stupid and racist enough to want to be associated with making such an association

The right has a well known history of leveraging racism with plausibly deniable working and images ("... if anyone was offended....") That's the essence of Rovianism and the Southern Strategy, for pity's sake. Personally, I think it's entirely possible that if the Post thought the cartoon would throw red meat to its readers, then they would, in a heartbeat. What do they care about what a bunch of latte-sipping liberals think?

Oh, and if anybody said this, I missed it: let's look at the context. From the NYCLU:

During the last two years the NYPD reported the race of those shot by police, nearly 90 percent of the people shot at by officers were black or Latino. In 1998 the Department stopped reporting the race of civilian targets and started reporting the breed of dogs being shot.

And then there are incidents like Amadou_Diallo.

Now, let me try to spell it out. Since we're not writing a mathematical proof here, but examining a political cartoon from a Murdoch property, it's quite clear to the political lizard brain, if not to the tediously literal minded, that: 1. Black people == monkeys; 2. the police shot a black person, not just because the blacks == monkeys, but because the police shoot black people quite frequently; 3. this black person is whoever's responsible for the stimulus package, and 4. the monkey is Obama, since he's responsible for the stim package, and is the only black person on offer in the context.

This is not a stretch at all. It's the obvious, mainline interpretation. Complete with the ability to say "Oh, we didn't mean that," which is the scenario that played itself out.

I mean, that's what flashed through my mind when I saw it, since my brain has been so polluted by daily examination of right wing propadanda for five years, and it was so obvious there seemed no value add to posting on it. Not so, apparently.