The New York Post today offered up a non-apology apology for its offensive editorial cartoon featuring a chimpanzee many felt symbolized President Obama.  The cartoon which featured a pair of policemen standing over the dead body of a chimp they just shot with one stating “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”  drew widespread cries of racism on the part of the Post’s editorial board, which led to hundreds of people protesting outside of the New York headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, (located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, B. 47th & 48th Streets, New York, NY for anyone who might happen to be interested) the parent company of the NY Post.

The Post claimed in its tiny, 151 word editorial, entitled “That Cartoon”, that “It [the cartoon] was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.  Period.  But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.  This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.” 

It should first be pointed out that The Post had previously refused to express any form of apology over the cartoon whatsoever.  However after two days of protests, it flip flopped and changed its tune.  But more troubling is that a widely read newspaper, presumably run by adults, is actually expecting people to believe that it felt the chimp in this cartoon, coming from the most virulently conservative newspaper in the country, would in no way be thought to represent President Obama who had a hand in actually crafting the stimulus bill, in the mind of the public.

But if that weren’t enough, the brief editorial goes on to say that “to those that were offended by it, we apologize.”  As if to say: “if you made the mistake of actually getting uppity and indignant about something that’s pretty obviously racist, but we’re claiming is not racist, because in this society it’s considered unacceptable to be outwardly racist, then, and only then, we apologize.”  That’s not an apology.  It’s people who we will charitably term as jerks, continuing to be jerks.

And if there was any doubt that the people writing this mini faux-mea culpa were jerks, get a load of these parting words, “However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.  To them, no apology is due.  Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.”  It seems a little lesson is needed here, which no doubt will fall upon deaf ears at The Post.  When you offend people with a cartoon published and distributed throughout the NYC Tri-State area and well beyond, you don’t get to pick and choose who you apologize to, if the gesture is to have any meaning whatsoever. But what can one expect?  Col Allan and his stooges at the editorial board of The Post have been a disgrace to the profession of journalism for years.  Their shamelessness and lack of humility after this pathetic incident is just another day at the office for a group of vindictive jerks who truly couldn’t care less.

You can takepart in fighting racism in this country by checking out the NAACP.

LINKS:

HuffPo: New York Post Employees Unhappy, Ashamed of Offensive Cartoon

Xinhua: New York Post apologizes to some for political cartoon

Market Watch: Post apologizes, sort of, for cartoon