U.S. President -chimp no more?

Note -This was initially posted on the Liberty News Central. However, since this has much to with artists and their freedom to critique popular and populist figures, I am reposting it here.

The happy days for cartoonists showing the US president
as a chimp are over. It will not be tolerated in the Obama age.

To those of us on the non-leftist side of the barricade it has been obvious for decades that one of the most potent weapons in the leftist arsenal is their readiness to shoot the charge of 'racism' at the drop of a hat. They have used it to effectively to oppose policies and people they don't like and to defend their own, to induce guilt on a civilizational scale and weaken the moral fabric of a whole way of life.

If we didn't live in an nightmarish Orwellian world, it would be obvious to all that the modern day racism is now an official platform of the left -it is the leftists who clamor for race based quotas in admissions, jobs and contracts and it is the 'rightists' (i.e. libertarians like myself) who would like to live in an absolutely color blind world.

Thus we have another round of grapeshot from the left's favorite weapon. We are told that this cartoon, which is actually quiet intelligent and amusing, is racist-




It allegedly portrays Obama as a chimpanzee, something which is denied by the artist. But what if it were? Why would portraying Obama as a monkey be racist? And if so then why was endlessly comparing Bush to simians not racist?






Different rules for different races. That's racism. And it now overwhelmingly comes from the left.

It is ironical and tragic that the artistic establishment is solidly leftist because the left and artistic freedom are like oil and water -the much vaunted 'pushing of boundaries', the much tom-tommed 'edginess' simply disappear when a favorite leftist project is critiqued. Thus you have thousands of images of Bush as chimp -but one image which is only indirectly suggestive(if even that) of Obama as a simian is intolerable. The cutting edge artistic expression only cuts one way. When it threatens to cut the other way, then the defense of artistic freedom doesn't seem so important anymore.

The cartoonists know they are now walking on a minefield while trying to show Obama -a minefield they fully connived in creating. For years they had full freedom to slander Bush -and they did it with gusto. Despite all the talk of 'police state', no midnight knock ever came for any artist. Yet one innocent cartoon in the age of Obama and the knives are out.

Cartoonists treading lightly when drawing Obama
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Editorial cartoonists are bending over backwards a lot these days, as they try to satirize the nation's first black president. And when they don't, the result is the kind of outcry that erupted this week after a New York Post cartoon featured a bloody chimpanzee — intentionally or unintentionally evoking racist images of the past.
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Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for The Birmingham (Ala.) News, said he received several complaints this week that his Obama drawings look "simian." As a conservative in a city that's 77 percent black, Stantis has learned to consider the feelings of his audience.

"Being the typical American editorial cartoonist — doughy, white, middle-aged — I'm more than willing to accept that I don't know what may or may not be offensive," he said. "But editorial cartoons are supposed to be offensive, and provocative. We're entering new waters here. What can you use or not use?"

"All my characters look simian," he said. "I don't make Obama look nearly as simian as our former Gov. Fob James, who I DID draw as a monkey, on more than one occasion. And he's a white guy ... I'm sorry, but when it comes to African-Americans, you just don't draw monkeys."

Ted Rall, president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, said that Obama's race has affected how his colleagues do their jobs: "Without a doubt, people are stepping more gingerly. People are tiptoeing their way through this."

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Perhaps race relations would improve, Lester said, if black people lightened up a bit: "They're not too good (at being) made fun of. We can all take a joke."

No, the race industry hustlers can't.

(As they say, read the whole thing.)


Hey, artists, show some courage -do unto Obama what you did to Bush:




Update -look who is leading the 'Anti-racism' protest-
the infamous race baiter Al Sharpton. If he were a Republican he would have been run out of politics by a hyper-hysterical media mob eons ago. Just a sampler-

1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.

Oh yes, needless to say Sharpton is from Obama's party.

Update 2- John Hinderaker-

Democrats will no doubt continue to use Obama's race to try to silence criticism, but they can rest assured that conservatives will never unleash the kind of mindless hate against Obama (or anyone else) that we have all witnessed from the Left over the past six years.

(emphasis mine)