Cheap monkeys, cheap cops, cheap shots
NY Post cartoon supposedly combining current news. Racist? You decide
Normal when Al Sharpton makes the news claiming something is racist, I just turn the page or change the channel. 99% of the time the man is a broken record, finding a way to place race in anything.
Yet the recent cartoon (to the left) that has brought him in the news may be a case for the man. Honestly, I find it to be at it’s best distasteful. Honestly, I’d like to see the cartoonist come into trouble over this. But even more than that, I think it’s time to let the editor go. If he is dumb enough to let something like this hit the press, you never know what he is going to do next.
But maybe we can pull something positive from this. Although the optimist in me wants to believe that this was not a cheap shot, the realist in me can’t agree. Yet maybe we need to dig deeper and face the real problem this cartoon stirs up – the fact that we are afraid to publicly confront the issue of race.
I’m not referring to crying out against racism. Sadly, it still exists. In all forms. But so does sexism, anti-semitism, etc. Hell, the Nazi’s are still around. Some people actually think they had good ideas. After watching Germany destroyed by World War II, they honestly believe in them. Beyond me.
Our new attorney general hit the head on the nail though. When it comes to matters of race, America is a coward. Most people get uncomfortable when they have to figure out what they should say in order to be politically correct. Is it black, african american, colored? Some lady at my job recently said colored, after some thought to try and figure out what would be the correct thing to say. And sadly, she’s 43 years old, so where she got that from is beyond me. As you can imagine, it stirred up some controversy, offending several blacks. And if me saying “blacks” offends you, tough. I’m white, so why not.
I hope one day America can move past the color of skin though. I’m thankfully not alone in being someone who doesn’t make decisions based upon skin color. My best friends are black, italian, arab, and white, and my close friends cover that and beyond. And that includes all forms of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. I could care less about what they are on the outside. We’re people, I care about who you they are on the inside.
Yet too many people make decisions based on color. I’ve heard more cracks on Obama because of his skin and his name than I can stomach anymore. So let’s set the record straight. Barack Obama is OUR president, the 44th of this country. If he isn’t your president, then you need to leave the country. A couple of hundred years ago some really smart guys, who we refer to as our “founding fathers,” decided that if a majority of people voted for someone, he was the leader of them all. That is something that we should assume as Americans! And until our country has fallen into the hands of a tyranus leader and has committed more foul acts to his countrymen than our soul can tolerate, then and only then can we disown and overthrow that leadership. Read the Declaration of Independence sometime. They didn’t write out a short paragraph saying the King was a tyrant.
The color of Obama’s skin makes no difference. I respect and understand that he represents a culmination of years of civil rights struggles, a true success story. Yet what this shows even more is that the American dream may not be perfect, and even more, that it is not handed to us. Everything we consider great in this country was fought for, paid by blood and tears. Obama isn’t just a civil rights success story, he is an AMERICAN success story. But being black makes him no less our leader, but that much more, a human.
So while we can get all wrapped up in the racist hysteria because of one cartoonist of poor taste and an editor who makes poor editoral decisions, we miss the point. If we jump up and down and scream foul everytime something seemingly racist comes about, we don’t empower the fight against it, we empower it. Racism is like a rock star, even bad publicity is good publicity.
To make a good ending on this story, the New York Post should submit a retraction and an apology, along with disciplinary actions against the editor and a severe scolding of the cartoonist.
