Sean Delonas: The ID in Cartoon Form
By now, we’ve all seen the image of Sean Delonas’s cartoon, which was featured in the NY Post.
Oh, the hilarity. As you can see, the cartoonist has cleverly substituted the “stimulus bill” with a rendering of Travis, the 200-pound, murdered chimp, who was shot dead a few days ago in Stamford.
For those depraved readers out there, who are unaware of the genius of Sean Delonas, this cartoon is a microcosm of the Delonas oeuvres. I’ve always imagined Delonas as a giant baby that tears open the daily newspapers, rips apart the pages, and then aligns two totally unrelated stories side-by-side and declares: “DIS ONE GO WIF DAT ONE, OKAY?!”
Well, that metaphor is flawed. He’s that giant baby, if the baby was racist, homophobic, and generally more ignorant and xenophobic than your average baby.
Some civil rights groups see the cartoon as being more sinister than simply unfunny. Since Barack Obama signed the stimulus into existance, and African-Americans have historically been linked to the monkey via ugly racism, is it a stretch to link the image of a dead monkey with Barack Obama?
Works of art are inherently open to different interpretations, and one wades through murky uncertainties when trying to determine the REAL intention of artists. Because trying to analyze the deeper meaning of a cartoon is so speculative in nature, I offer readers Delonas’s other works of art as a window into the artist’s ID.
Let’s see if we can find themes of intolerance in Delonas’s past cartoons.
(in response to a gay marriage story)
Etc. Etc. This may shock you to learn, but Delonas has gotten into trouble with civil rights groups in the past. It’s easy to see why.
Eric Holder is right. We’re a nation of cowards when it comes to issues of race, and the biggest cowards among us hide behind their unfunny doodles.
Update: Gawker has a similar post thisaways.
Seems to me that people who see race as EVERYTHING are the most racist of all. Monkey in the news – and a bill that could have been written by a monkey… WTF does it have to do with race UNLESS you want it to for your own agenda. Hence YOU are the race baiter.
Ah, of course. That darn Martin Luther King was just a race-baiter. If only you had been around to remind him of his place.
I was there and supported Dr. King. BTW since partisanship and race is so ‘all important’ to you, let’s not forget he was a Republican.
In that era, many blacks were Republicans because this is when the party was still known as being “anti-slavery” instead of what it has become since then: white, closeted-gay men.