My general rule of thumb is that, when some issue breaks and Al Sharpton becomes involved, I generally take the opposing side. Not out of any personal dislike for Sharpton, but because typically he’s wrong.
The current situation with the New York Post presents a bit of a poser, though. In case you haven’t heard, the NY Post ran an editorial cartoon depicting a couple of cops having gunned down a chimp, and one of them says to the other, “Now someone else is going to have to write the next stimulus package.” This has caused an imbroglio and prompted Sharpton to declare:
“Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama [the first African-American president] and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder whether the Post cartoonist was inferring that a monkey wrote it?” Sharpton said in his statement.
The answer, of course, is “no.” Sharpton is inferring it. The question is whether or not the Post cartoonist was implying it. This is a simple grammatical point and it’s mystifying that Sharpton couldn’t grasp it.
My response to the cartoon itself is twofold:
First, it’s the New York Post. Were they attempting to slam Obama personally, associating him in a racist fashion with a monkey? Possible. Then again, there’s the old notion that if you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room with infinite typewriters and give them an infinite amount of time, they could produce the works of Shakespeare. So it could be argued that a dead monkey is an editorial cartoon shorthand for something that anyone could have produced, in a random fashion, and not particularly well.
Second, and more important…it’s the New York Post! Why does anyone give a dámņ what they say about anything? Before they produce the works of Shakespeare, the infinite monkeys will probably produce an issue of the Post. It should be accorded exactly that amount of respect and concern.
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