Rupert Murdoch Apologizes For Sean Delonas’ NY Post Chimp Cartoon

Said apology apparently took place in the Post, and saw the Media Overlord both apologize for the offense and assure people that there was no intention to cause that offense. The same media analysis also reports Delonas' own reaction to CNN.

All along I've just thought it's a bad cartoon. Given Delonas' antagonistic history with GLAAD, I think it's understandable that people questioned whether he was tweaking people to get some extra juice from the piece -- but in the end, you can't see into someone's motivations and you have to accept the word of the Post people that this was an honest attempt to say that the Stimulus Bill was so bad chimps wrote it. That doesn't mean the decision to run it speaks well of the collective news judgment of those involved. I mean, 14-year-old me would have seen this and gone "holy crap" so it's hard to imagine a bunch of adults working within the context of a specific community not seeing it.

And you know, once this kind of thing happens, I have little patience for those who fume that their work is interpreted a certain way -- seriously, boo hoo. You don't have to give up any rhetorical device you want to use, you can have the President or something related in some tangential fashion to the president be a monkey-tailed rapper criminal in a slave collar and Westergaardian bomb-turban and be perfectly within your rights to do so, but some folks aren't going to like it, and it's on anyone working right now to assume ownership over their visual vocabulary. On those occasions something slips away from you or you're simply unaware of a certain metaphor and a misunderstanding or bad cartoon or just unfortunate visual metaphor results, an honest apology doesn't seem to me the worst thing to have to offer up, or at least the refusal of an apology if you think you'd do it again and have no regrets. A tiny bit of blowback from years of horrifying racism in art and opinion-making doesn't seem like the worst thing to have to endure -- better that than to have been on the other end of it.

I have to imagine most outcomes are better than having Rupert Murdoch say sorry for you.
 
posted 7:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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