The New York Post's decision to publish a cartoon caricaturing the bizarre incident of police shooting to death an escaped chimpanzee that attacked a Connecticut woman has generated controversy of its own.
The cartoon depicts two police officers standing over the chimp's bullet-ridden body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says to the other.
The cartoon could be attacked for making light of an incident that left a woman fighting for her life. But it was attacked for another reason. Many critics felt that the cartoon was racist, that the New York Post was comparing President Barack Obama to a monkey. It wasn't too long ago that people of African descent were not just metaphorically but literally compared to monkeys. Some protesters said the cartoon not only underscored racist tropes but even suggested that Obama should be shot. In the shadow of this country's experience with race, the cartoon was incendiary.
What was called for was a prompt and unconditional apology. But at first the editor of the Post dug in his heels and defended the cartoon. After three days of street protests, critical editorials, and thousands of phone calls, the Post finally capitulated. Except what it posed on its web site wasn't an apology it all. What the Post released was an attack against its critics.
Here is the cartoon.
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.
How insipid! The apology, which wasn't even signed, but presumably came from Editor-in-chief Col Allan, makes a number of classic mistakes that renders any apology ineffective.
First, it wastes our time on an explanation of the cartoon's intention. Lesson one in apology is that no one cares about the offender's intentions. What matters are consequences and that's what an apology must address.
Second, the apology must not imply--as this one does--that the issue is that some people were offended. The issue is that the newspaper chose to publish a patently offensive column.
Third, the Post's decision to use an ostensible apology to attack its critics and deny them any of the apology's benefits is disgusting. It strips the statement of any slight apologetic meaning it might have. No doubt the Post will complain that the controversy will continue. After all, we apologized. What the Post doesn't get is that its apology was akin to someone on the shore throwing a drowning man 15 feet from shore a 10-foot rope and then wondering why the drowning man is complaining. After all, we met him more than half-way.
Shame on the New York Post.
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