Level the playing field? Seems to me you don't even know where the field is. Ridiculing Bush's stupidity and incompetence does not quite compare with thinly veiled racism.
The cartoon I was commenting on said specifically "write", not "be held accountable for". Obama did not WRITE the stimulus bill, ipso facto he is not the one being targeted in this cartoon. Next time we are having a discussion about a cartoon implying the person who will be held accountable for the stimulus if it fails is a monkey, then feel free to chime in... ...another day, another off topic irrelevant post by a moronic jackass ET troll.
Yo TDAWG, For the record, in the past, the KKK members were and still are generally quite open about their affiliations. The white sheets are a tradition. They actually used to dress up in various costumes merely in order to freak people out (shortly after the War of Northern Aggression). It wasn't to hide. Even in the 1900's, several extremely prominent politicians were very open about their membership in the KKK. I don't agree with the KKK at all, but I wanted to point that out. I don't agree with anyone who has hatred for someone based on their genetics. I do believe in intelligent white people not taking shit off racist morons who constantly make false accusations. I do not feel bad about slaevery or anything else. Frankly, I don't give a shit. Why? I had nothing to do with it. Secondly, the evil white people bought most of the original slaves from BLACK AFRICAN TRIBAL LEADERS. So I guess they are racist as well. It happened, it's over...get over it. When someone makes comments obviously intending to stir up racial controversy, etc such as Al Sharpton (after all, that is his job...just like a preacher holding a revival in the Spring...gotta keep that collection plate passing back and forth), I am going to comment. This is not what we need right now. It's like they want to start some kind of race war over the goddamn stimmilus money. That's unAmerican.
Liberals often forget one thing. The First Amendment protects offensive speech. Why would it be needed otherwise? Speech doesn't need constitutional protection if everyone agrees with it. This cartoon is close to the line, I agree. It cleverly transposes the chimp that got shot with the idiots who wrote the stimulus bill, but everyone who sees it is going to think obama. So what? This is just what plenty of us predicted during the campaign. Democrats will try to censor criticism of Obama as racist. It certainly didn't take long. Liberals seem to think any racial connotation should be automatic grounds for expulsion from the human race. Provided of course, that the african american is a liberal democrat. They thought caricatures of Condi Rice were hilarious, that vicious attacks on Clarence Thomas were legitimate. The same people saw nothing wrong with comparing Bush to a chimp, calling him Hitler, saying he planned 9/11, saying the whole rationale for the iraq war was to profit Halliburton, claiming without any evidence that Bush stole the 2000 election, saying he deliberately lied about Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities, etc etc. There is an obvious parallel here, and I am surprised no one has mentioned it. Attacking a newspaper for a cartoon that a group finds offensive? Isn't that precisely what pretty much everyone thought was unacceptable when the muslim thugs were doing it? No one had any problem seeing the potential for chilling critical commentary. Of course, that doesn't mean the muslim intimidation campaign wasn't effective. Monkey see, monkey do.
The sheets don't quite cut it anymore as they once may have out in the open, so that leaves other, perhaps more subtle, alternatives. A coy cartoon does very nicely. Free speech and all that. You don't feel bad about the country's history of slavery and an anger towards the people who participated and profited from it, irrespective of color? That's funny, because I feel bad about it. I also feel bad about the genocide and ethnic cleansing that continues to this day in other parts of the world. I don't have to be responsible for it to feel bad about it and for those who have suffered. That's empathy, not guilt. Sharpton is and will be Sharpton. However, that doesn't take away from the thinly veiled racism depicted in that cartoon.