Political Cartoon Controversy in New York Post

[BirminghamExaminer]

The New York Post published a controversial political cartoon by Sean Delonas in its February 18th edition depicting a chimpanzee shot dead on the street by policeman and one policeman saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

The cartoon at best was in poor taste and at worst was racist. There is some precedent for the reaction by activist, Rev. Al Sharpton and others who saw the cartoon as racist. African Americans have been portrayed as non-human primates such as apes and monkeys in the past. The New York Post claims the cartoon wasn't meant as racist but it's hard to see how the editor didn't recognize how the political cartoon would come across to the public as racist.

Political cartoons have a long history in American newspapers and magazines. In 1871, Harper's Weekly published a political cartoon depicting William Marcy (Boss) Tweed in a controversial drawing with the caption, "Who stole the people's money?" in which Tweed's cohorts pointed to Tweed. Tweed offered Thomas Nast $100,000 to go study art in Europe. Tweed conjectured that most of his constituents couldn't read, but they could understand a picture.

There's a well known cliche about history repeating itself and one of the reasons the adage is well known is because it's true. One only has to look back through the years of political cartoons to see that much of what is happening today happened during the Great Depression. After the great stock market crash of 1929, President Herbert Hoover left the White House with a nation in turmoil as unemployment soared to an all time high and the nation saw its worst recession followed by the Great Depression. When Franklin D Roosevelt took office and immediately began the task of rebuilding the nation's economy by creating jobs, a la the New Deal, most of the nation gave him their support.

n "The Ungentlemanly Art: A History of American Political Cartoons" by Stephen Hess and Milton Kaplan, Hess and Kaplan wrote,

But the great majority of cartoonists-perhaps reflecting the great majority of their publishers-were hostile to the New Deal. ....Never had cartoonists and public opinion been on such separate tracks, and never had each so little effect on the other.

This political cartoon is the work of Herbert Johnson of the Saturday Evening Post, from the 1930s.

To see the anti-New Deal era political cartoons which are very similar to todays' along with the rest of the article, please click here. Comments are appreciated.

[FrenchieCat]

1. Nice Site!

Yep......I see the parallels!

Thanks!

[BirminghamExaminer]

2. The right is trying to re-write or re-Right history...saying the

Depression was CAUSED by the New Deal? Someone commented on the article something to that effect.

The good news is that the same sort of reaction by a vitriolic right wing took place in the 1930s and it didn't change anything.

The facts are that Obama and the economic recovery plan still has public support while the GOP congress' approval numbers just keep dropping. They still haven't figured out that they are fighting against the nation.