The case for and against Sean Delonas

Published Feb 19 2009, 11:58 AM by Adam Reilly

A new Poynter Institute piece on NY Post cartoonist Sean Delonas's February 18 offering--which may or may not have depicted Barack Obama as a dead chimp--includes a semi-exoneration from the excellent cartoonist Ted Rall:

Rall, who is familiar with Delonas' work, said he doesn't believe the cartoonist was saying anything about Obama. "It's about his economic advisers who wrote the stimulus bill, and they're a bunch of white guys."

Yet he also criticized the cartoon because it doesn't have a message. Delonas, he said, was employing a common editorial cartoonist technique of tying together two unrelated stories "and forcing these square pegs into round holes."

Yesterday, former Politico cartoonist Rob Tornoe made a similar argument in an email to the Phoenix:

My basic thought is that I don't think that Delonas is attempting to make race an issue in his cartoon. I think it's more likely that he was taking two news items of significance yesterday, the death of Travis the chimpanzee after he went crazy, and the passing of the stimulus bill, and tried to mash the two together as commentary, which is a tried and true method for cartoonists.

So, should we err on the side of charity and assume that Delonas didn't really mean to compare the first black president to a simian?

Maybe. But that's harder to do when you consider Delonas's oeuvre. Check out this Gawker recap of some previous Delonas lowlights, which include jokes about A) how fat Rosie O'Donnell is, B) how ex-Mrs. Paul McCartney has only one leg; and C) how gay marriage has paved the way for unions between human and sheep. This is pretty lowbrow stuff, and makes me reluctant to dismiss yesterday's Delonas cartoon as a mashup gone wrong.

Then, finally, there's the question of what Delonas's editos were thinking. Even if we give Delonas the benefit of the doubt, and say he only wanted to link the dead chimp to the stimulus package, surely someone in the Post's editorial firmament realized that the cartoon also links Obama to a dead chimp. As Boston Globe cartoonist Dan Wasserman told me yesterday, even if Delonas had no racist intent,

The editor's got to save him. The editor's got to say, "Whoa, what you're saying here is going to be widely misinterpreted. Despite your best intentions, you're calling the president an ape. That's like drawing drunken Irishmen or hook-nosed Jews."
[The image] has a history. You've got to know that. The cartoonist was ill served by his editor.

That, at least, strikes me as an awfully hard point to argue with.

Filed Under: race, Sean Delonas, New York Post

Shakeup at BoMag

New in the Phoenix: Howie Carr's February surprise

6 Comments

Dan Kennedy said:

Wasserman is absolutely right. Delonas produced a grotesquely racist cartoon whether that was his intention or not. If neither he nor his editors understood that, well, shame on them.

February 19, 2009 12:57 PM
Audrey McCracken said:

Shame on the NYP for allowing this to be published. If this was truly intended to depict those that wrote the bill, than maybe there should've been a bunch of apes in the cartoon. Given the history our country has experienced with this analogy, it's absolutely understandable why this could be misinterpreted by many.

February 19, 2009 2:39 PM
ani dalit said:

I'm also upset by anything that could move us closer to another presidential assassination, and maybe because of the impact on me of JFK's, RFK's, and MLK's assassinations in the 60's and all the comparisons of Obama to Lincoln and Kennedy, that's one of the first things that comes to my mind when I see something like this.

February 19, 2009 7:54 PM
aging cynic said:

Try as I might, I can't seem to locate your outraged posts on monkey/Alfred E. Newman cartoons of President George Bush. Get over yourself.

February 20, 2009 10:42 AM
AC said:

AC: As I'm sure you're aware, there's no history of WASPs being portrayed as monkeys.

February 20, 2009 12:42 PM
kate in new york said:

aging cynic,

that's because cartoons depicting bush as a monkey were not referencing any longstanding racial sterotypes. see wasserman's remarks. really, see them, because if you had already done so, I would hope you would be sharp enough not to have tried for a parallel where there is none. I suspect you saw the subject of the post and jumped in there without reading any of the array of positions presented here.

speaking of which; who, exactly, is supposed to get over him or herself? adam? he gave a lot of space to those who are sympathetic to delonas, more than I've seen in other publications and blogs. those commentators on adam's blog who were offended? if you have an intended audience, you might want to be more specific.

typically, aging comes with an appreciation of others' opinions and the value of cordial debate. and cynics usually exhibit a healthy distrust of the media. but you, unfortunately, seem more like a kid who's looking to rumble.

February 20, 2009 12:59 PM

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The case for and against Sean Delonas

6 Comments

Dan Kennedy said:

Audrey McCracken said:

ani dalit said:

aging cynic said:

AC said:

kate in new york said:

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