By now almost everyone has seen the cartoon from the New York Post and heard of the controversy surrounding it.

I won’t defend it – I think it is in poor taste.

Because there is a seriously injured woman fighting to recover after the real chimp attack – not because of any slight, real or imagined, to Barack Obama.

Let me explain.

1) Barack Obama and his administration didn’t write the stimulus bill – it was a product of an all-Democrat team assembled by Pelosi and Reid to write the bill. Thus the comment from the cop cannot legitimately be taken as referring to President Obama.

2) Even if Barack Obama had personally written every word of the stimulus bill, I would not find the uses of the chimp imagery to be inappropriate. Such imagery was directed against George W. Bush for eight years without a word of complaint from any liberal that I ever encountered. If it was acceptable for President 43, then President 44 is an equally legitimate target of such barbs.

3) Barack Obama is President of the United States. He happens to be black. He is not the African-American President. We degrade the office, the man, and his accomplishments if we give Obama a special pass or special protection from certain criticism or certain imagery that would be otherwise acceptable if directed against a President of another race.

Now let me take matters a step further. The cartoon itself is not an act of racism – and more to the point is certainly not an act of intentional racism. The reality is that the chimp imagery is, lamentably, topical due to the Connecticut chimp attack of earlier this week. It is not as if someone up and decided to put a chimp in a cartoon for no apparent reason. Similarly, this isn’t a call for an assassination because the chimp in the cartoon was shot and killed – it was a direct play on the tragic events just a few days before in which the crazed primate was shot and killed.

Should the cartoon have run? I’d argue that the best answer is a negative one. It isn’t funny. It is subject to misinterpretation because it is not clear. It is insensitive to the seriously injured victim. But in the end it just isn’t racist.

Or if it is, it is certainly less racist than these two noted cartoons about a prominent African-American in public life who was the subject of indisputably racist treatment in editorial cartoons which was met with silence by the same folks who are righteously outraged when they perceive a slight directed at Barack Obama.

Now am I ignoring that there has been a lamentable history of depicting blacks as apes and chimps? Not at all – but I’m also not ignoring the fact that when we place this cartoon in context there is little reason to argue that Obama’s race was the (or even a) motivating factor in the cartoon (especially since I don’t believe is even intended to reference Obama). And rest assured that when and if I see actual racism directed at Barack Obama, I’ll condemn it. But in the (probably apocryphal) words of one Sigmund Freud, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” – and I think this one is merely a cigar.

By the way, I would like to note two recent ways in which I have used a chimp reference in relation to Barack Obama – both times to draw parallels to the sort of disdainful treatment received by George W. Bush during his time in office. In a couple of instances, to parody the deranged ravings of too many Leftists who for eight years have referred to the former president as “Chimpy McHitlerBurtion” or some variation thereof, I have referred to Obama as “Chimpy al-Hussein bin-Osama” in a satirical fashion. Similarly, I asked a couple of pointed questions – one of which related to the classification of George W. Bush as a chimp by liberals – in this post about the desire of Obama’s handlers have the capacity to electronically feed the President answers during press conferences:

>Even George W. Bush could competently deal with the media. Apparently Barack Obama cannot do so. In light of that, I’d like to know who the real dummy is, which one really operates at the level of a trained chimp? After all, Bush may not have been as pretty as Barack or have been a polished orator behind a teleprompter, but at least he could answer questions from reporters without being programmed by someone else.

Again, the chimp reference is not racial slur – it is set forth to offer a comparison to eight years of derogatory references to the intelligence and abilities of George W. Bush, who could answer press questions unaided despite lacking Obama’s oratorical gifts and alleged soaring intellect. In no way did race even enter my thought process.