Me being a political junkie as of late, I made the connection of the joke being about Congress's ineptitude when writing the stimulus bill, and comparing it to a recent story of a rampaging chimp that needed to be shot by police, suggesting the chimp itself wrote the bill which was why it needed to be shot.
I got the joke, but some people didn't find it that funny.
A lot of people immediately equated the chimp with Obama. Being a black man, of course any representation made in regards to him being a monkey is going to be deemed as racist. And a LOT of people seemed to jump to that conclusion, especially people who are fans of Obama. That they immediately equated it with racism had me thinking "hmm. . ."
Except this joke isn't about Obama. It's about Congress, and Nancy Pelosi. Maybe they should have had 'CONGRESS' scrawled on the chimp's chest just to prevent people getting confused, but that political cartoonist sure got some free publicity out of this.
EXIT QUESTION : would people have been offended if it had "nancy pelosi" written on it?
EDIT - I'm quite partial to IMAO's take on this story
I might have found that even more funny, depending on the font. lol! The inference that monkeys and black men are analogous goes back too far to be ignored; its several hundred years old, at least. Now, someone with an open mind and some comprehension skills won't necessarily make that connection, but the weak minded or those that lack the ability to discern the implications of the media in question will jump to conclusions every time, especially if it makes it easier to pigeonhole the author as being on the wrong side of the issue.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is, that bill was so half assed it's amazing it didn't cost twice what it does. The geniuses on Capitol Hill didn't seem to notice that 80% of the spending is a couple years down the road. How exactly that stimulates our flagging economy now is not something I can explain.
Nancy Pelosi does have a chimp-like quality about her...