On February 16, 2009, a once-famous advertising Chimp went nuts. Attacked the fifty-something year-old friend of his seventy-something year-old owner immediately upon her entering the house the chimp shared with the elder woman. The chimp bit and gnawed and tore at the flesh woman. Her shoulders and face bled profusely. She remains in critical condition. When police arrived some dozen plus minutes later, and it seems they did not arrive as quickly as one would hope, they shot the 200-lb. chimp dead.
In 1977, Rupert Murdoch purchased The New York Post. The newspaper is best known for its tabloid-style headlines; however, like all Murdoch’s media purchases, The Post has become conservative. Not just conservative, actually, but virulently right wing. Murdoch also owns FoxNews where a viewer can hear outright lying by its talking head hosts each and every night. They make up “facts.” They misrepresent; they present partial truths; they blame Democrats for the very sins of their beloved Republican Cabal. FoxNews is best termed FalseNews.
On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion American Reinvestment Act. He spoke about this piece of legislation being the beginning of the end and he acknowledged that there is more work to be done. Twenty-nine minutes later the first shovel-ready project was underway in Missouri where a bridge began undergoing repairs.
One strategy southern racists used to keep “uppity” blacks in line was intimidation. The KKK, the local police force or just a group of local good ol’ boys would remind the uppity one to mind their place. So, today when The New York Post published a cartoon that tied together a chimp[1] that got out of line and was shot dead with the symbols of keeping people in line – read police – it was Rupert Murdoch, the representative of corporate royalism and elitism warning The Most Powerful Man in the Free World that he ain’t nothing compared to the corporate elite and that he had better watch himself OR ELSE.
Here’s the cartoon:
All of us, Black, white, Latino, Asian, progressive, liberal, true conservative, gay, straight, abled or differently-abled, man, woman and even every child must stand up now against this hateful, sly innuendo of a threat.
We must flood the Secret Service with requests to investigate. We must ask everyone in New York and its environs to write to The Post in protest, to stop buying that rag and to complain to each and every advertiser that we will not support them if they do not support our President, THE President of the United States.
We must contact every republican in Congress and tell them that living out a politics of “no” will not do.
We must tell every friend and family member of the hatred that flows forth from these so called Republicans.
We must use our freedom of speech to defeat their threat to our democracy.
We must use our power by the people, for the people and of the people to crush fear and hatred and idiocy of the powerful who think threats will make us tremble.
As FDR says: We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
As Pat Robertson said, yes, Pat Robertson: Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.
What three things will you do in the next 24 hours to denounce this racist, hateful, counter-productive, un-American assault on our President? __________________________________________________
[1] Chimps, apes, monkeys and other primates have, historically, been derogatory terms used to describe African-Americans.
