“Without a doubt, people are stepping more gingerly. People are tiptoeing their way through this.”- Ted Rall, liberal editorial cartoonist.
Last week’s firestorm over an editorial cartoon at the New York Post is still burning it’s way through the media and the blogosphere, and in the wake of Eric Holder’s declaration that Americans (read: white Americans) are cowards and James Clyburn’s claim that rejection of stimulus funds is motivated by racism, the reactions are naturally mixed and sometimes contentious. Reverend Al Sharpton, for example, is demanding investigations and protests. MSNBC is having shouting matches. Some cartoonists are simply preparing to self-censor and nevertheless suffer unintended consequences. The controversy is not soon to die down.
In light of the cartoon war, the Associated Press ran a story Saturday, from which the above quoted material was pulled, examining the overall shift to caution by that normally incautious breed of political commentator, the editorial cartoonist. Because Barack Obama is black, to summarize the article, political cartoonists now operate under the duress of fear. In America, there is no worse stigma than that of being called “racist,” especially in the age of Obama. The armies of political correctness and so-called progressivism feel free to act more boldly, now that a man who owes his political career to the forces of the far left holds the highest office in the world. The left is, therefore, if even possible within physics, more likely than ever to throw the “racist” gauntlet.
There is a difference, though, between a thing that can be taken a certain way, and which may or may not offend the person who so takes it, and a thing that is overtly racist: racist in tone, racist in intent. It is clear, to the objective observer, that at most the Post cartoon is the former, and in no way is there any reason to think it the latter. I have ample evidence, click through to keep reading.
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