Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Anti-Stimulus Cartoon "Offends" People


When Obama was running I told all my friends the same thing; "I'm afraid of him winning if for nothing else than we may not get to make fun of him. Too many people will be afraid that they'll be labeled racists or offensive or whatever!" My friends... well, they tended to look at me with glazed eyes because they didn't care.

So when the Obama Sock-Puppet Monkey came out and I laughed because I thought it was cute, you can imagine why I wasn't shocked that a lot of people found it offensive. "Your comparing him to a monkey! RACIST!" Well... yes and no. In the past, yeah, comparing black people to monkeys was racist. At the same time, we have a tradition of comparing politicans to chimps, orangutans... simians of all shapes and sizes. We've never cared about the race of poltiican, just the fact that they were an inept chimp.

And then this.

Seriously, outrage over this? “OH MY GOD! It’s two WHITE cops shooting a CHIMP! RACISM!” What are you, 5? If it was two black cops, would it be racist, or just a really interesting political statement no one would care about it? What if it wasn't a chimp at all, but a snake. "Oh no, they killed a snake!" No one cares about snakes! Everyone fucking HATES snakes! Chimps? We like them!

The only people offended by this are people who want to see some sort of racism in and of itself. How many cartoons have there been over the last 8 years comparing Bush to a chimp? Seriously, how many? I lost count after the first 1,000,000.

Apes, monkeys, chimps… people compare politicians to primates all the time! I didn’t see it as a racist; I saw it as them saying only a idiotic chimp would write a stimulus bill like that, that the bill was stupid and seemed to be written by a chimp.

I'm 99% sure that the guy who drew this said, "You know, some people might get offended by this, but I'm sure that it's just going to be a few people and that'll be it. No one is going to care about what a few idiots think. I'm certain that the audience of The New Post have enough of a brain to realize it's not racist but basic social commentary using ideology and imagery we've used for years." He vastly underestimated the basic level of intelligence the average New York Post reader has.

How many people “outraged” laughed at the Bush-Monkey comparison? How many people “outraged” love Obama and voted for him and would shout outrage at any bad press about it, screaming “conservative bias”? How many of these “offended” people think black people have had it so hard they need to be protected? How many people “offended” realize that Al Sharpton is a idiotic douche bag who has said and done horribly racist things himself?

At the same time, how many people laughed at this:

You remember this, right? Mohammed with a bomb on his head. People laughed and chuckled at it but we all said, "you know, that might be offensive to some people, but at the same time, the guy is basically saying that religion can be used as a weapon. He isn't saying 'All Muslims are crazy, just some of them.'" We all used our brains and made a rational decision and moved on. We laughed at the crazy bastards over the ocean who protested and thought it was so horribly bad.

Well... your turn. It's your turn to realize that your an adult and you need to be treated as such, to be challenged, to be offended! You don't have a right to not be offended, you have a right and a privileged TO be offended! To question! To be treated as thinking, rational, mature human beings!

This cartoon isn’t racist unless you want to be. If you think it is, please cancel your subscription to the New York Post, boycott it, whatever... meanwhile, I'll be over hear laughing at how silly you look.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that this picture is very bad and it's designer is very impolite and should answer to all person that love the Mohammad the great profit.

Anonymous said...

Let's put it in reality terms, anything,and everything is subject to ridicule. Doesn't matter if you are a thinking adult or a closed minded religious nut, funny is funny. From a rock the looks like a "dong" to a tree stump that looks like a ____y, a child making faces to cartoon characters Blowing thelmselves up. if you cannot accept other peoples views on YOUR lifestyle then I suggest you GROW UP!
This is to the Anonymous post.