Yesterday afternoon, film director Spike Lee joined the Reverend Al Sharpton and hundreds of others to protest the NY Post's decision to run an editorial cartoon featuring a dead chimp killed by police. Lee said of the paper, "Shut it down... It's not just black folks. It's an insult to everybody."
The cartoon shows one cop saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill"—which prompted many to think this was an allusion to President Obama, who is closely associated with the stimulus package. However, the NY Post made a quasi-apology for the Sean Delonas-drawn cartoon, saying, "It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill. Period," and not President Obama.
The Post pointedly apologized to "those who were offended by the image," but not to "some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past" who apparently "see the incident as an opportunity for payback"—a reference to Sharpton, who has been a a subject of Delonas as well as a target of the Post. Sharpton told WCBS 2, "Apology is a good gesture. It's a good first step. But it does not answer where we want it to go because unless you deal with policy what safeguards this from not happening again?"
At the protest, the Daily News reports that Lee admitted to buying the Post before but said he would boycott it—and urged other entertainers and athletes to snub the paper's reporters. The director, who also brought his 11-year-old son, was incredulous about the cartoon's tone coming from a hometown newspaper, noting, "New York City is the greatest city on this Earth. It's the most diverse city. The News also has some thoughts from other people; a 50-year-old man said, "I'm outraged that the stereotypes I encountered as a child still exist today."
