There is outrage by many on the left over a recent cartoon that ran in the NY POST. Al Sharpton (obviously) is the most vocal critic. The Post responded to complaints with the following statement from editor-in-chief Col Allan: "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."
Ok, lets say for a second they were comparing Obama to the chimp. All of a sudden you cant compare the President of the United States to a chimp? Let's take a look back to the previous administration.
You don't have to search that hard. There was an actual website set up called bushorchimp.com Here is just one of the many pictures you could get on that site.
You could go to political humor and find this picture
You could go to this Huffington Post article by Philip Slater, with the headline New Scientific Study Reveals Bush is a Chimp. An excerpt from the article, Prior to reading this new study I was under the mistaken impression that Bush was a parrot, because of his apparent inability to say anything about Iraq except 'progress is being made', which he repeats mechanically every time the topic is raised. But now the scales have fallen from my eyes: Bush is a chimp. It seems so obvious now, watching him speak.
You can go to a site where it is simply designed for you to Make Your Own Bush Chimp Monkey Cartoon.
Now there are countless more examples on the web of the former President being derided as a chimp. There are 966,000 search results to Bush is a chimp. So I beleive it is safe to say that comparing the President to a chimp was acceptable for the previous 8 years.
Now many people will say, well there are racial overtones to this, so you must be sensitive to that. Well, lets look at what else has had racial overtones when Obama is the target. Showing Obama in the same ad as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears was racist. From the NY Times:
The ad gave us an uneasy feeling that the McCain campaign was starting up the same sort of racially tinged attack on Mr. Obama that Republican operatives ran against Harold Ford, a black candidate for Senate in Tennessee in 2006. That assault, too, began with videos juxtaposing Mr. Ford with young, white women.
Then there was Obamas association with Bill Ayers. Bringing this up was also deemed racist. The AP headline screamed, Analysis: Palins Words Carry Racial Tinge.
Also don't think about calling Obama a socialist. Not because his economic policies aren't socialist but because that word is also racist... when used to describe Obama. So said Lewis Diuguid of The Kansas City Star. His headline was, Shame on McCain Palin for using an old code word for black.
When the North Carolina GOP put out an ad using Jeremiah Wright, the NY Times wrote that "this was a clear bid to stir bigotry" and that it was race-baiting.
So to recap, it is racist for Obama to be used in association with white women, white men, chimps, black men, and socialists. Now, this is going to make it a very tough next 4 years and an extremely difficult campaign in 2012 if we don't get to the bottom of this. And thankfully, I believe I have.
Seeing as Obama is half white, I am proposing that HALF of the above people or words be made acceptable to be used to criticize Obama. You can take the chimp off the table. It's been done to death over the past 8 years, and its boring. So that leaves white women, white men, black men, and socialists. All we want is to be able to use half of those over the next 4 years and not be called racist. It seems fair to me, and we know Obama is all about fairness.
