 "Photo: Photo Courtesy/Huffingtonpost.com")
The New York Post recently published a cartoon on its editorial page that many found offensive. The cartoon that created this entire buzz played off an incident the day before, in which a chimpanzee being kept as a pet was shot and killed by a police officer. Said chimpanzee had brutally attacked a visitor in its owner’s home before storming out the front door and cornering a police officer in his cruiser. The officer proceeded to shoot the chimpanzee, and that is where this story begins.
The Post’s editorial cartoon depicts two police officers, one of whom has just shot a chimpanzee dead. The second officer asks "Who’s gonna write the next stimulus bill?", and the firestorm began. Many people, for whatever reason, did not completely understand the actual meaning of the caption and professed to be quite offended.
A quick review of the School House Rock skit "I’m Just A Bill" provides all the information that is necessary; a bill begins in either the Senate or the House of Representatives and must pass muster in both chambers of Congress before it is sent to the President. There is no other possible explanation except that the dead chimp represents Congress. There is no slap at the President implied here, and there are no racial overtones, despite the belief that some people hold that this must be a dig at President Obama’s ethnicity.
The incorrect assumption that the dead chimpanzee in the cartoon represents Obama has drawn fire from all sides, and it puts the dreaded "race card" on the table. A laundry list of celebrities, activists, and even TV judge Greg Mathis, have spoken out against the Post; this calls into question if any of them actually know how a bill becomes a law.
The downtrodden bill of School House Rock fame explains to a young boy how a bill is written by a Congressperson, debated in committee and put to a vote in both chambers before the President either signs or vetoes it. Congress, meanwhile, has been insulted and ill-spoken of by the general American public for years, with nary a thought about whether their ethnic or gender makeup has anything to do with their performance.
The American public seems to think that party politics determines whether a Congress or a Presidential administration is successful or not. The truth is that all Americans, regardless gender, sexuality, religion or political affiliation, have a responsibility to each other to be willing to work together. America is viewed by the masses as the greatest nation in the world and it’s up to us to make sure that this image is not crippled by political infighting or unrest among the many diverse groups that make up our society.
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