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David Shuster has been having bloggers on his show regularly and whether it was the intent or not, these conversations have been consistently diverging from the traditional right/left divide that dominates most of cable TV. Today’s discussion between Baratunde Thurston and Cenk Unger about the New York Post "monkey" cartoon was case in point, probably because both participants come from the progressive blogosphere which isn’t simply an extension of the traditional "liberal" side of the dominant politcal dialectic, but rather reflective of a separate political narrative altogether .
Typically a cable producer would book a black guy to say "it’s racist," a white guy to say "it’s not," and if they wanted to get really original, they’d flip ‘em. But the exchange between Baratunde and Cenk was much more nuanced, opening up the conversation and emphasizing the need for further discussion on the subject of race — especially in the wake of the first black president. They both make compelling points and Shuster did a great job of drawing them out.
Casey Gane-McCalla also has a post up on the cartoon at Oxdown:
The humor and parody excuse can only work if if you take in to consideration both the intentions of the author and the perception of the audience. If you research New York Post’s cartoonist, Sean Delonas previous work, it is clear that he is a right wing bigot who routinely dehumanizes people from different viewpoints and cultures. The way this guy disrespects and dehumanizes Arabic people is way more blatant and inexcusable than the infamous stimulus monkey.
Also if you take in to account audience perception, the same right wing bigots who read the post are pretty much the same sort of people who compared him to a monkey through out the campaign. The audience from the Post did not likely now that Obama did not write the stimulus plan and viewed Obama as the face of the stimulus package.
Casey brings up another way of considering the cartoon, which is to examine intent in the light of context– not only of the cartoonist’s previous work and the Post’s political slant, but also of audience perception.
As Baratunde says over at JJP, feel free to continue the conversation in the comments.
3 Comments
Well, there’s this
Wait – progressives can have more than one point of view? Now I’m so confused.
This was a good conversation, and a positive one. I agree particularly with Cenk Uyger’s point that calling something “racism” instantly stops real conversation. It becomes defensive and unproductive, as do most conversations where labels are used.
For my part, while I can see where some people might have taken it that way, I still don’t see this cartoon as racist. It’s tasteless, both because of its reference to a tragic event and because of the aggressive, nasty sort of humor it represents. But those are objections based on personal taste, not a perception of racism.
As for Casey Gane-McCalla’s point, all I can say to that is that the way I do humor, and the way most people I’ve heard talk about it do it, is that they do what seems funny to them. This, for instance is uproariously funny to me. I can see where some folks might be offended, though. The only person I really wrote that caption for was me. What or who it’s disrespectful to, in my opinion, is due to my motives, not the motives of the folks who happen to see it and laugh at it. I don’t write humor for them, mostly because I can’t. I just figure that if I find it funny, someone else will, too. (Admittedly, that’s a concept that doesn’t always hold true.)
One other thing that jumped out at me was the way that MSNBC showed the Post’s apology. When I was reading the first page, I thought “OK, this is good.” Then the second page appeared, which was the part where the editors went off on all the folks who, they thought, were just using this as an excuse to garner attention for themselves. Whether they are right about that or not, it certainly made the apology seem insincere. Note to anyone thinking of apologizing this way in the future – leave out that second part. Behaving with class is the best way to contrast yourselves with the screamers.