^{Note to readers:  I am still lite blogging due to a wrist injury.  LSU}

I will qualify this up front that Obama himself is not the race baiter, or the person dropping the race card, though he has played that game in the past.

The problem here is his supporters and other members of his party, including one member of his cabinet.

This is about three separate stories, all of which happened in a short period of time.

The largest and loudest was the NY Post cartoon scandal:

A New York Post cartoon that some have interpreted as comparing President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police drew outrage Wednesday from civil rights leaders and elected officials who said it echoed racist stereotypes of blacks as monkeys.

The cartoon in Wednesday’s Post by Sean Delonas shows two police officers, one with a smoking gun, standing over the body of a bullet-riddled chimp. The caption reads: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

The cartoon refers to a chimpanzee named Travis who was killed Monday by police in Stamford, Conn., after it mauled a friend of its owner.

And it refers to the fact that the Stimulus bill just passed (unread) must have been written by a crazed monkey because it was so absurd and ridiculous. 

Some critics called the cartoon racist and said it trivialized a tragedy in which a woman was disfigured and a chimpanzee killed. Others said the cartoon suggests that Obama should be assassinated. Many urged a boycott of the Post and the companies that advertise in it.

“How could the Post let this cartoon pass as satire?” said Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. “To compare the nation’s first African-American commander in chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel.”

Excuse me but Obama did not write the bill, so how is it a comparison?  This is just plain stupid race baiting.

State Sen. Eric Adams called it a “throwback to the days” when black men were lynched.

Only because people insist on seeing it as racist, which has been a primary tactic of the Obama campaign and democrats to deflect criticism.

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the cartoon “troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys.”

Convenient, since they have been portraying Bush as a chimp, and much worse, for the last 8 years.

The Post stood its ground…

Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the Post, defended the work.

“The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut,” Allan said in a statement. “It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

…but not for long, as it eventually backed off and apologized…somewhat:

After two days of protests, the New York Post apologized Thursday for a cartoon that some have interpreted as comparing President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police. But the newspaper also said its longtime antagonists exploited the image for revenge.

The qualified apology didn’t mollify at least some of the cartoon’s critics, who said they might continue protesting Friday.

The newspaper posted an editorial on its Web site Thursday evening saying the cartoon was meant to mock the federal economic stimulus bill, but “to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.”

The piece was posted hours after 200 picketers chanting “Boycott the Post! Shut it down!” marched in front of the paper’s office, saying the cartoon echoed racist stereotypes of blacks as monkeys.

The editorial said that “most certainly was not its intent,” adding that some media and public figures who have long-standing differences with the paper saw the cartoon “as an opportunity for payback.”

Calling them “opportunists,” the editorial said: “To them, no apology is due.”

I applaud them for that anyway.

As later stories revealed, this illustrates the delicate line that editorial cartoonists are facing:

Cartoonists treading lightly when drawing Obama

Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz was in front of a classroom full of black and Latino kids, drawing presidents. He sketched Bush, then Clinton. Next came his favorite, the man he voted for: Obama.

“Hey, those lips are big,” Alcaraz heard a black girl say from the back of the room.

Alcaraz was disturbed. “I try to bend over backwards not to make him look like a cartoon stereotype,” and certainly not a racial stereotype, he said.

Editorial cartoonists are bending over backwards a lot these days, as they try to satirize the nation’s first black president. And when they don’t, the result is the kind of outcry that erupted this week after a New York Post cartoon featured a bloody chimpanzee — intentionally or unintentionally evoking racist images of the past.

The problem is, cartoonists make their living by making fun of people — especially presidents — and exaggerating their features and foibles.

The best political cartoons are “like an X-ray machine,” said Amelia Rauser, an art history professor at Franklin & Marshall College and author of “Caricature Unmasked,” which examines the art form’s historical role in political discourse.

“You have to deform someone facially in order to make a larger point about their character,” Rauser said. “But that deformity reveals their inner truth and makes them look more like themselves.”

The late Herblock often saddled Richard Nixon with an enormous cartoon nose. Liberals drew George W. Bush like a simpleton, or worse. There have been minor kerfluffles from the left about drawing Hillary Clinton as insufficiently feminine, and from the right about depicting Condoleezza Rice as servile to President Bush.

Of course making Rice into Bush’s little slave or whore was never racist despite her being black, as conservative blacks are exempt from this protection.  Remember Michael Steele being parodied in black face?

Drawings of President Barack Obama, however, must contend with America’s history of degrading racial imagery, from ape comparisons to enormous “Sambo” lips. (Caricatures of the president’s admittedly large ears have so far escaped scrutiny.)

Only for so long.  Eventually they will attack that as being some manner of racial insensitivity.

The real point is that any criticism of Obama must be countered by the liberals, and the use of the race card is easily the most volatile and indefensible.

Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for The Birmingham (Ala.) News, said he received several complaints this week that his Obama drawings look “simian.” As a conservative in a city that’s 77 percent black, Stantis has learned to consider the feelings of his audience.

“Being the typical American editorial cartoonist — doughy, white, middle-aged — I’m more than willing to accept that I don’t know what may or may not be offensive,” he said. “But editorial cartoons are supposed to be offensive, and provocative. We’re entering new waters here. What can you use or not use?”

It wouldn’t matter except that the President’s staunch defenders are on the prowl for any hint, whether real or imagined, of racism.  During the campaign it was constant.

And race continues to be a factor in his administration too, as this story mentions:

Holder: US a nation of cowards on racial matters

Eric Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, said Wednesday the United States was “a nation of cowards” on matters of race, with most Americans avoiding candid discussions of racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder said.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

What amazes me about his comment is that he can be so right and still completely miss the point.

Are we cowards?  Damn right.  Speaking as a white guy, I tend to tread carefully in matters of race.  The penalties and risks of being labeled racist are too severe.  It can cost you not just your reputation, but your job.

And that fear may be a part of why we segregate.  But don’t all races tend to do this too?  Aren’t blacks and Asians and Hispanics just as guilty of self ghettoization?

Holder’s speech echoed President Barack Obama’s landmark address last year on race relations during the hotly contested Democratic primaries, when the then-candidate urged the nation to break “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years” and bemoaned the “chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.” Obama delivered the speech to try to distance himself from the angry rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Conservative critics have lined up against Holder’s comments, including a shot at Obama and the Wright issue:

The king of conservative talk, Rush Limbaugh, called Holder’s comments “inexcusable” on his syndicated radio program Thursday.

“Eric Holder in his speech yesterday calling this nation still a nation of cowards on the issue of race – this country that has shed more blood than any nation in the history of the earth to wipe out slavery and discrimination against people of color around the world,” he said. “It is an inexcusable statement and yet there they are the drive bys are right there defending it an explaining what he meant by it.”

The Chicago Tribune, meanwhile, reports that Joe Hicks, a black Republican and the former executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, chastised Holder for his comments, calling them incendiary.

“Here’s the first black attorney general appointed by the first black American president and he’s espousing views that appear to be almost ultra-left in their approach to race in America, that blacks are victims and whites are intolerant and accepting of quasi-racist views,” Hicks said.

Conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin wrote in her column: “Funny. When I think of racial cowards, I think of Barack Obama at Jeremiah Wright’s church, sitting there week after week, year after year, saying nothing about the separatist demagoguery echoing from the pulpit to the pews.”

“I find Eric Holder’s comments on race both hackneyed and reprehensible,” a post by Jonah Goldberg in the conservative National Review reads.

“First, I think this is nonsense as we talk about race a great, great, great deal in this country. Endless courses in colleges and universities, chapters in high school textbooks, movies, documentaries, after-school-specials and so on are devoted to discussing race. We even have something called “Black History Month” — the occasion for Holder’s remarks to begin with — when America is supposed to spend a month talking about the black experience,” Goldberg wrote.

Of course, even that outrage is considered racists, proving again where the problem is,  Consider this:

And a conservative talk show on KXNT Las Vegas solicited audience feedback that reflected conservative outrage – and sometimes bordered on racism, CBS News radio’s Howard Arenstein reports.

“Maybe if my grandfather was a slave I would be a little indignant about it,” one man said. “But I just think its time to let go.”

“Most white people I know have black friends,” another complained. “How many white friends do black people you know have? That’s the problem.”

I re-read those statements.  I find nothing racist in either. And maybe that is the real problem.  We have spent so much time battling racism, and arguing about racism that we have forgotten what racism really is.¹

But never mind, even such speculation is considered racist I would imagine.

Heck, even opposing the stimulus is racist.  Figure that one out.

Someday maybe we can get past this and actually not care, but as the left has a preoccupation with race, we are bound to live in the racist world they created…out of nothing.

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1. rac·ism  Pronunciation: \ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi-\ Function: noun  1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race 2 : racial prejudice or discrimination [back]