Oh dear

[year_x]

Seems any ability for irony or proportion Americans may have had before has now gone out of the window.

It was badly judged, but obviously unintentional. Can everyone please stop being so jumpy?!

*le sigh*

Guess our bretheren from across the pond just ain't too bright. At least it's all good fodder for Family Guy/South Park/Simpsons.

Comments

[gethrees]

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick here but that picture really does appear quite awful - it is the equivalent of throwing a banana skin at John Barnes. While one could argue that Obama did not himself construct the bailout package and so Pelosi et al. could be the ones labelled as monkeys, it is generally cited as Obama's bill and therefore the reference to the bill's authors is obviously a racist attack on Obama. Sorry for being so assertive about this, as you well know I love a sick joke, but there's no need for explicit racism.

Yours
Buzz Killington

[year_x]

But they were using the monkey story to refer to all politicians. They just got it wrong. They were just saying "now we've killed a dumb animal, who else can write the rubbish legislation". so saying "the government is worse than a dead monkey"

Maybe I've got it wrong, but it does seem fairly knee-jerk to me. If the animal had been a rampaging dog which was shot, and they used that, it wouldn't have been racist, right? But a monkey, with the historical links and all that, makes it racist.

I just don't think it was their intention. I agree with how it's been seen.

[year_x]

If you said the government was worse than a dead dog, that would be funny. Which I think was their intention.

Maybe I should pick a more humorous animal to defend my point. A giraffe?

I'm not arguing that it could be seen as racist. But my problem is that people are mixing the two views of it on purpose to make a point which isn't there

"To compare the nation's first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel."

They're not doing that! they're comparing the administration to a dead monkey!

[llamarines]

Geth, there are 1.7 million search results for [George Bush is a chimpanzee].

Ten seconds of searching showed up hundreds of images comparing Bush to a chimp. http://www.bushorchimp.com/ is the #1 search result.

Refusing to apply an epithet which you would apply to any other politician at will to Obama just because he has slightly darker skin is nothing short of moral cowardice, in my book. If you dislike a politician, lampoon them as you would any other. I'd argue most anti-Obama Americans dislike him and lampoon him because he's about to piss a trillion dollars of federal money up the wall, not because his skin is a bit browner than theirs.

[guyinahat]

Are you suggesting that it's entirely reasonable to parody Obama as a monkey?

[llamarines]

Yes. If it is acceptable to parody George Bush as a monkey, it is acceptable to parody Barack Obama as a monkey.

Politicians are politicians. I absolutely refuse to label them by the colour of their skin.

To spell it out

[guyinahat]

Mocking both of them as monkeys:

Bush was mocked as a monkey because he pulled faces that looked somewhat monkey-like and was generally considered to have a similar intelligence level. That was the reason it was considered a joke.

Obama on the other hand, isn't generally considered to look monkey-like and doesn't appear to be an idiot (editing the Harvard Law review and suck like). So that would not be the reason it was considered a joke.

What would the reason be then? Could it possibly be because he is black and there is a tradition of racist jokes associating all black people with monkeys? All black people. A joke based on racial generalisation and bigotry.

An alternative example would be to take the piss out of two politicians by calling them yellow. One is Caucasian and had an accident with some yellow food dye, while the other is Chinese. Do you see the distinction?

Re: To spell it out

[cr4k]

youre the fuckin racist

Re: To spell it out

[guyinahat]

Oh dear, you've gone and wound me up with your cunning wit.

Re: To spell it out

[cr4k]

lol

Re: To spell it out

[llamarines]

WARNING: LOTS OF WORDS :V

I understand exactly what you are trying to say on this point, Guy but I won't back down on this one.

If he'd been portrayed as a golliwog, fine, you'd have a point, and I'd be as dismayed as the next man. But there is a long tradition of calling politicians monkeys. I have done it my whole life. Lots of people in the US think Obama is a DANGED COMMUNIST and think the economic stimulus package is a terrible idea and disagree with his policies and therefore want to mock him as stupid - but only the retards hate him because he is black, and you can ignore them

Re: To spell it out

[llamarines]

Edited for terrible glaring grammar and spelling errors which changed what my arguments meant, fucks sake I am a dumb monkey today

Re: To spell it out

[cr4k]

tbh if I was going to make a serious argument it would be that the cartoon is not intrinsically racist and that you have to judge the meaning of an ambiguous work in the context of previous work from from the author.

To me, the stronger metaphor that comes out is that the politicians are unable to control themselves and are making a disfiguring attack on people that trusted them.

Re: To spell it out

[guyinahat]

There may be some tradition of calling politicians monkeys, but there is a longer and much more insidious racist tradition of calling black people monkeys. Refusing to acknowledge it doesn't make it go away

Re: To spell it out

[llamarines]

Yeah. I understand your points but I just don't think we're going to agree here!