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This is the anti-”Politics Happy Hour.” This cartoon appeared today in the NY Post.

From HuffPo:

The drawing, from famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, is rife with violent imagery and racial undertones. In it, two befuddled-looking police officers holding guns look over the dead and bleeding chimpanzee that attacked a woman in Stamford, Connecticut . . . the incorporation of violence and (on a darker level) race into politics is bound to be controversial.

Al Sharpton agrees:

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.”

“Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?”

And the NY Post attacks Al Sharpton:

“The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.“

I don’t buy that. This isn’t the first time Obama has been compared to a monkey. And this cartoon might have been mildly effective if the Connecticut chimp, Travis, had somehow been involved with trying to resuscitate or save something. The more I think about this cartoon, the more I am grossed out by it.

And, I also think that the overtones of assassination here move the cartoon from being offensive to alarming.