The Reverend Al Sharpton is putting the smack down on the New York Post -- suggesting racism could be a factor in a political cartoon featured in this morning's edition. The cartoon (by Sean Delonas) comes in the wake of yesterday's national news story about the cop who shot and killed a rampaging chimp in Connecticut. But the controversy in the comic comes from the dialogue between the two officers -- which reads, "Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill."
The Rev. Al Sharpton says a New York Post cartoon that appears to link President Obama to a violent chimpanzee is "troubling at best." The cartoon in Wednesday's Post by Sean Delonas shows a dead chimp and two police officers, one with a smoking gun. The cartoon refers to Travis the chimp, who was shot to death by police in Stamford, Conn., on Monday after it mauled a friend of its owner. It links the chimp to Obama, who signed his administration's economic stimulus plan on Tuesday.
Before most of you woke up, Sharpton already fired off a statement saying, "The cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that "Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill."
