I’m not worried about the monkey. I seriously doubt the cartoonists were making a racial slur, although I can and do fault their lack of sensitivity to the history of the whole monkey = black people racial stereotype.

I was seeing a Brazilian woman once who invited me to a party where I was the only American there. Not understanding much Portuguese, I wandered the room smiling like an idiot and giving everyone a kind of thumbs up gesture, as in, “I hear ya.” Well, in Sao Palo, the all-American thumbs up is considered an obscene gesture, similar to our middle finger. I’d spent most of the evening insulting her guests and making a fool of myself.

I doubt the New York Post could be considered that naïve, and I’m quite sure somebody brought the whole monkey = black folk argument to the attention of the editors before they ran the cartoon. Having worked in publishing over thirty years, I can tell you, with certainty, before a publisher goes to press, he or she has scrutinized their content closely. Somebody knew this monkey thing was loaded with dynamite, and chose to go to press anyway. This uproar over this phony, non-issue, is just what they wanted: attention. To the issue? No, to the New York Post which, like most newspapers in this country, is struggling to remain relevant in an era of instant Internet news.

If I’m going to wag my finger at them, it will be over exploiting deep wounds in this country for cynically commercial reasons. But, trust me, they knew exactly what the cartoon meant. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Having said that, the cartoon really isn’t very funny—on a general level, so far as political cartoons go, it was quite ho-hum. And, let’s be fair, we’ve been calling George W. a monkey for years.