New York Post gave a half-hearted apology for the racist cartoon published earlier this week: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.
I hate when people discount their apology with subsequent verbiage. If you are truly repentant about something ... then simply apologize and be done with it. Don't give some half-azzed apology like we see above. Apologizing on the one hand, while sniping at Rev. Al Sharpton on the other hand.
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what the New York Post does or doesn't do. It does matter how we respond. I am proud of the response that I've seen from villagers on this racist cartoon. I imagine that folks will think twice before making comparisons of Black people to gorillas, apes, chimpanzees or other monkey-like creatures.
That's my view. What say u?
