I’m sure that by now most of you, if not all, have heard or read about the cartoon that was published in the New York Post earlier this week. That cartoon depicted a chimpanzee being gunned down by New York’s finest, with one of the policemen saying in the bubble: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

I had actually read about it before I saw the cartoon in question. I also read the editor-in-chief of the Post Col Allan’s defence of the cartoon: “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.”

Try as I could to be open-minded about his clarification on the meaning of the cartoon, I couldn’t. Long has been the history of alluding to or calling Blacks as “monkeys” (or equivalent terms) — with the sole purpose of being intentionally offensive and racist. And Blacks have been told to “go back to your tree in Africa” — or some such. Puerile, hateful and bigoted stuff. Then I saw the cartoon in question. It left no doubt it my mind that the chimp is President Barack Obama. Bullet-ridden. And satire it is not.

Deborah Lipstadt points out on her blog:

Whether the NYPost meant it to be racist or not is almost irrelevant. The fact that Blacks have been regularly stereotyped with images of apes and monkeys is undeniable. It is as fundamental part of that stereotype as large noses and money bags are of the Jewish stereotype.

The fact that it was juxtaposed with a picture of President Obama signing the bill did not help the NYPost’s claims that the monkey did not mean Obama. [There was a pet monkey shot in NY a few days ago but that does not explain away or excuse the racist elements of the cartoon.]

This evening, I opened up the SMH website, and saw the headline, “Post apologises for chimp cartoon”. While I immediately thought the Post were just being prudent and in damage-control considering the world-wide outcry and disbelief, at least there was an apology. However, upon reading the apology, it turned out to be not much of an apology at all:

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy.

It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says.

It 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.

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.

Quite frankly, using this opportunity to have a go at those in the media and in public life who “have had difference with The Post in the past” is nothing short of pathetic. The churlish attack on their detractors (whoever they are; they don’t specify) simply served to render their apology obsolete after all.