NY Post Issues Insulting 'Apology' for Racist Cartoon

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 4:51 AM on February 20, 2009.

Yesterday, the New York Post published a cartoon by Sean Delonas showing two police officers shooting a chimpanzee and saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." Many people immediately questioned whether the chimp was meant to be President Obama. Hundreds of people protested outside the offices of the Rupert-Murdoch owned NY Post today, calling for the paper to be shut down. This evening, the Post put up an editorial apologizing to some people who were "offended by the image." At the same time, however, editors said they were disgusted by "opportunists seek to make it something else":

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.

Update: Wayne A. Schneider over at The Zoo has more on why this isn't really an apology.

Tagged as: racism, protest, obama, racist, ny post, cartoon, "apology"

Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Deputy Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.