NY Post Says Sorry

The New York Post apologized in an editorial for the political cartoon it ran that critics said showed Obama as a chimpanzee. LINK. The cartoon combined two news stories that were big last week: President Obama’s financial stimulus package and a chimpanzee who was shot and killed by police after it attacked a woman, severely mauling her face. LINK.The Post has been in this business long enough to know what the reaction would be to a depiction of Obama as a chimpanzee, even if the reference was an oblique one. So the paper either ran it with the intention of being racist. Or they didn’t believe it was racist and knew that some people might think it was, but ran it anyway. So why then apologize? My students had a theory: for the publicity.