The New York Post has apologised for an editorial cartoon that critics said was racist because it likened US President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee
The New York Post has apologised for an editorial cartoon that critics said was racist because it likened US President Barack Obama to a chimpanzee.
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Apologising for the cartoon published on Wednesday,u00a0whichu00a0has drawn controversy because African Americans and others saw it as a depiction of Obama, the paper said "This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologise."
In an editorial on its website headlined That Cartoon, the paper added, "It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill. Period."
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It comes after angry protestors rallied outside the paper's Manhattan offices.
Demonstrators led by populist civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton chanted "Boycott the Post. Shut it down. End racism now" as they milled in front of the News Corp headquarters of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
The controversial cartoon depicted police officers shooting dead a chimpanzee - a reference to a real-life incident this week when a pet simian was killed after it horrifically mauled a woman in Connecticut. "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," observes an officer with a smoking gun.
The country's first African-American president had the previous day signed the $787 billion economic recovery bill after a heated debate in Washington.
Sharpton immediately accused the newspaper, which takes a strong conservative editorial tone, of deploying a crude racist stereotype of blacks as monkeys.
Col Allan, the Post's editor-in-chief, had vigorously defended the cartoon as a parody of Washington politics, saying it "broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy".
His comments have done nothing to defuse the anger of critics and telephone lines to the Post have also been flooded with complaints.
Sharpton, who is arranging meetings with advertisers to call for a commercial boycott, said, "I guess they thought we were chimpanzees. They will find out we are lions."
Some protestors also accused the cartoon of raising the spectre of an assassination of Obama. "Just the fact that they put a monkey with gunshot wounds in his chest, it gives the idea of an assassination," said Peter Aviles (48) a building superintendent.
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