There’s nothing funnier than a bullet riddled chimpanzee corpse to make a humorous point about the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil logic of Washington deal makers. At least that must have been the considered opinion of the editorial leadership of the New York Post when the best and brightest at the Post agreed to run the dead monkey gag by cartoonist Sean Delonas on the the paper’s saucy Page Six. On the pavement of the cartoon lies a great ape turned to Swiss cheese by bullet holes. Behind the smoking gun, from the mouth of the police officer who shot him, come the words, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Har-Dee-Har-HAR-Dee-Har-HAR!

Boy, did he skewer the Washington elite with that topical gag “ripped out of the pages” of this week’s newspapers. See, there was this famous performing chimp in Stamford, Conn., that went nuts and almost killed an old lady. When police responded to a frantic 911 call from the animal’s owner, the chimpanzee named Travis turned its anger on the men in blue who — get this — ran away and jumped inside their patrol cars. Tee-hee!

Eventually, the police fired several shots at the 200-pound primate, which has between five to seven times the strength of a man that size. Travis ran back into his house where he was found dead inside his cage. His 70-year-old victim lies in a hospital bed clinging to life. Meanwhile President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package that was greeted by investors on Wall Street with a 300-point drop in the Dow.

It was a perfect storm of non sequiturs.

How you could possibly compare the desperate and brutal termination of a pet chimp gone wild with the most important economic legislation passed by Congress since the Great Depression? Let’s start with that question before we proceed to the question of how Travis the dead monkey morphed into a cartoon advocating the assassination of Barack Obama, according to outraged protesters who see the cartoon as racist and more than enough reason to shut down the New York Post, which has published longer than any newspaper in the United States.

If I may quote Struther Martin, who was Paul Newman’s chain gang warden in Cool Hand Luke: “What we have here, is a failure to communicate.”

The outrage from the public about the cartoon — as much because of the racist implications as the poor taste of making a joke about a cop shooting of a famous monkey — was all caused by a bad cartoon. It wasn’t funny. It didn’t make a point. A parody or satire has a clear, recognizable connection between two unalike people or ideas. What the cartoonist meant is still a mystery, despite the New York Post editors’ response to the protests that it was a “clear parody of a current news event.”

OK, the chimpanzee represents the people who wrote, voted and signed the stimulus package, one of whom happens to be the most prominent African American in the world. So who are the cops? Are they Republicans, Wall Street, Main Street, you and me? Why did they shoot the chimp dead? Did the chimp attack them? Are they trying to protect us from the homicidal chimp?

This whole controversy is the result of imprecision by the cartoonist. We don’t know what he’s trying to tell us. We’ve got a dead monkey killed by cops and bleeding out on the concrete like William Blake’s Red Dragon. We’ve got a wise cracking policeman whose symbolic importance is anyone’s guess. And we’ve got a point of view that is both impenetrable, racially suspect and in poor taste.

The perfect storm. And the New York Post brought all this on itself for all the wrong reasons.

 

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Tags: race & culture, trusted media & news // 1 Comment »