A word of qualification: When a person says “NOTHING irks me more than….” what they are saying is probably not true. Surely there’s at least something that irks them more than what they’re about to talk about. They’re not lying, or course, they’re just using that turn of phrase for rhetorical effect, to point out that what they’re about to describe is really annoying to them. So please, allow me to do the same.

NOTHING irks me more than partisanship that is so severe that those who suffer from it have completely blinded themselves to reason – prepared to engage in publicity stunts attacking people who dare to disagree with their political views, accusing them of moral failures, utterly shutting out any awareness of glaring double standards or special pleading. I’m talking about people like Al Sharpton and Barbara Ciara. Read on.

You may have heard of the recent News Story about the Chimp that went nuts and attacked a woman in Connecticut. The police ended up shooting it dead. You may also have heard of US President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package that has taken major criticism from various people and groups. One such person is Sean Delonas, a cartoonist for the New York Post. He drew (and the paper published) a cartoon of two police officers, one of whom has just shot the chimp dead, and the other of whom is remarking, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Here’s what it looks like:

Is this the first time a US president has been compared to a monkey on account of his poor ideas? If you have a memory that stretches back only a number of months, you’ll know this is not the case. President George W Bush has been on the sharp end of exactly this comparison numerous time. People said he was stupid so they depicted him as a monkey to make this exact point.

Here’s an example over at the Hollywood Liberal: An artist depicted George Bush’s face by using monkeys to create the image. The artist was a non-white man (you’ll see why this matters soon), and the image caused protests (not police action or state intervention, but protests carried out by citizens). The manager at the exhibition saw the piece and demanded that it be taken down (the artist says that the manager was going to arrest him, which is a little silly. He’s a manager, not a police officer). The writer at the site had this to say: “Touchy, touchy, touchy, I wonder why the guy got so upset about the painting. Could it be that the Truth hurts. Everybody on the entire planet knows that monkey boy is a Monkey, but Republicans just have to deny reality no matter how stupid they look doing it. “You painted Bush with monkeys?” Oh my Godddd!” Store that away in short term memory: Bush is called “monkey boy” and any offense taken at this is ridiculed. I’m not complaining about this – people have the right to an unfavorable opinion, after all.

Or here’s another one – this time from the “Black Voices” web domain. Ouch. Scroll down to see Bush depicted as a Chimpanzee (ouch again) with a gun.

There are hundreds of examples – literally. I’ll save you the monotony – HERE is what you get when you do a Google image search for a combination of “Bush” and “Monkey.” Take it as fact: it happens a lot, OK?

Now somebody has done the same thing to Obama. They thought his Economic stimulus package was stupid, just like many people thought a number of Bush’s ideas were stupid, so they portrayed him in a way that derided his competency. They portrayed him as a monkey. His package was so bad, the cartoonist thought, that it could have been written by a monkey.

No problem, right? Wrong. Now things are different. Hundreds, maybe thousands of attacks on Bush’s competency by calling him or comparing him to a monkey is fine, but this – this is racism. Hatred. Bigotry. It reminds us of the bad old days when niggers got lynched (yes I know that’s a terrible word, that’s why I used it, to make the point). This is a whole new ball game.

Read about the furor this cartoon of the chimp caused HERE. Al Sharpton and other leaders from “various groups” are to protest outside the publisher’s offices. He’s not alone:

Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said The Post showed a “serious lapse in judgment” by running the cartoon.

“To think that the cartoonist and the responsible editors at the paper did not see the racist overtones of the finished product should insult their intelligence,” Ciara said in a written statement. “Instead, they celebrate their own lack of perspective and criticize those who call it what it is: tone deaf at best, overtly racist at worst.”

Overtly racist. Overtly. If you call Bush’s intelligence and ideas into question by depicting him as a monkey, people understand that it’s an attack on how smart he’s being. But do the same to a black President and you’re being racist. Overtly so.

How is it that people who present themselves as politically savvy can be so absolutely naive? If somebody wants to criticise Obama’s competency, what animal would they prefer? This is a very old method of attack: Fake outrage. Don’t bother to even try to deny the point being made, just concoct some obviously false charge of racism (or homophobia, prejudice against short people, insensitivity towards people who… um, I don’t know, sprained their ankle as a kid, take your pick), and chant, march, wring your hands, demonize people, wail as loud as you can and try to bully those who disagree with you into apologizing.

Are you people (yes, I said “you people,” oh no I must be a racist, even though I’m talking about people who engage in a certain tactic, not people with a certain colour) really that stupid, or are you actually being duplicitous here?

(While writing this post, I noted that Scott [errata: oops, I mean Trevor] over at The Will to Exist made the same point during Obama’s campaign when someone made a T shirt portraying Obama as a Monkey.)

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