Chip Bok's Bokbluster

Attorney General Eric Holder says we’re all cowards now. Actually, “A Nation of Cowards”. Way to get off on the right foot during a catastrophe.

According to Holder we are cowards because we are unwilling to discuss racial matters. True that. Or as Vince Lombardi used to say, “Al Sharpton makes cowards of us all”.

Who wants to discuss racial matters with the Al Sharptons of the world parsing every syllable for racial insult? Which brings us to the Sean Delonas cartoon in last week’s New York Post (click the Post link and navigate to the Feb 18 cartoon at the bottom of the page). In the cartoon a cop shoots a deranged simian and says “they’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill”. Sharpton reflexively accused the Post of using the cartoon to say that 53% of the American electorate voted for a chimp. Never mind that Nancy Pelosi wrote the stimulus bill. A Danish cartoon crisis ensued, minus the beheadings, with protesters demanding the Post be shut down. As Rahm Emanuel used to say, never waste a crisis.

So scratch all ape references off the diminishing repertoire of diminishing cartoonists. No more King Kongs swatting planes of whatever evil from the top of the Empire State building. Wait, that would be bad? O.k. but it’s the principle I’m talking about here.

Already The Washington Post has pre-emptively apologized for Gene Weingarten’s humor column about apes which had nothing to do with race or the stimulus bill. Cartoons are exaggerations, but is it any exaggeration to say that it would have taken a room full of monkeys with keyboards 5 seconds to come up with a better bill than Pelosi’s? I think not.

If any one should be offended, it’s the poor woman who had her face ripped off by the Xanax crazed chimp. It’s even kind of sad that the misplaced wounded animal staggered to its bed to die. I’ve tried to stay away from unrelated tragic news events as cartoon launching pads ever since the reaction I got from this one at the 2000 Democratic Convention while Russian sailors were trapped in the Kursk. (Click thumbnail)

The one with no right to be offended is Sharpton. Once again, it’s not about him. Ever since the Obama election, Rev Al has been beside the point, a sunken relic of the past. Is it any wonder people aren’t interested in reading newspapers that are afraid of offending the likes of him?

Come to think of it, Eric Holder has a point.