New York Post chairman and publisher Rupert Murdoch has apologized for the controversial Sean Delonas cartoon about the stimulus bill that many interpreted as a racist depiction of President Obama as a monkey.
The cartoon was this blog’s Cartoon of the Week for last week because of reactions to it and its international attention.
Buried on the Post website today — in Other Local News — Murdoch’s statement says, in part:
I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.
Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.
This follows a half-hearted apology by the Post last week to those it offended, while defiantly refusing an apology to those who protested and urged boycotts because of the ‘toon.
Murdoch’s News Corp also owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
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Good move by Murdoch. The cartoon was inappropriate, and he took responsibility. That’s pretty rare these days — just look at the banks…
Of course, he needs Obama almost as much as Obama needs him. That might not have anything to do with it, though.
To pick up a tangent here, it strikes me that the bill for all the various bailouts and successive stimulus packages is spiralling enormously.
The UK government’s intervention currently sums to £1.3 trillion — amongst 60 million people that’s over £20k (around $30k each) for every person in the whole country. It’s also equivalent to the entire annual GDP.
Balancing that out across the wider economy and allowing for the time value of money (someone’s got to pay for it, and cough up the interest) equates very roughly to something approaching a 20% drop in the value of UK plc.
That means asset values and house prices must decline by 20% (domestic property is so far at -17%, and falling, and commercial property is even worse).
Reducing the nation’s salary bill by 20% will mean increasing unemployment to 10% or 3 million (as it happens that’s the current forecast for the end of the year) and then also reducing everyone else’s wages by 10% (stripping out all overtime, incentives and bankers’ bonuses could just about get there).
Put simply, as Mr Murdoch would have to agree, it’s just no laughing matter, however you sketch it…
Hi, Roads. Don’t you think Murdoch had no choice? It’s more than a kerfuffle here and more than just Al Sharpton up in arms. Yes, he has done some butt-kissing re:Obama but even though the Post endorsed Obama over Hillary in the NY Primary, it endorsed McCain for the general election.
Michael Wolff, the Vanity Fair writer who spent 50+ hours with Murdoch for his bio of Murdoch that came out a few months ago and has a deep understanding of him, was on TV last week after the non-apology apology and predicted the following, in this order 1) Murdoch himself would have to apologize 2) Editor Col Allan would get fired (and he wrote about that yesterday at Newser) and 3) a few months down the road, just so it doesn’t look too obvious, Delonas would get fired.
We’re one-third of the way there. Heads should roll over this.
The stimulus and various bailouts make my head spin. Instead of just throwing good money after bad, we (the global we) seem to be throwing money willy-nilly in hopes some will end up where it might do some good. I’m becoming numb to the amounts involved and almost numb to bad news. We just found out today US home prices took a steep dive in the 4th quarter and the head of the Federal Reserve says we’re in a “severe contraction.” To which most citizens could and might say, “Well, duh.”
Where will it end? I saw the concerns about a summer of discontent on your side of the pond and I don’t think it’s fear mongering. I hope it doesn’t come to pass, but it seems a distinct possibility.
Thanks for a wonderful comment. Perhaps all this is why the curse “May you live in intersting times” is indeed a curse.
… ah yes. doom & gloom … the underlying credit crisis is worrisome, to say the least, especially when you realize that most governments and businesses and individuals have been playing the ‘credit’ game for decades now … In simple terms, the ‘currency collateral’ just is not there.
Stock market valuations are a chump’s game. Markets have been flying high on those valuations, again, for decades.
What’s happening now is a very stately game of global banking dominos … one bank falls, and they all fall. My prediction, dire as it sounds, is that the American dollar will hit ‘junk status’ within the next two years. I just do not see how any stimulus or ‘blue sky’ bail-out ‘bank-roll in the dyke’ is going to save economies from what will soon be a veritable flood of bankruptcies. (…to mix a slew of metaphors….).
The real fear is that the powers-that-be will do what they’ve always done when at wit’s end with no-one else to tax, bully or blame – go to WAR. It lurks there behind it all. Fear and uncertainty drives men to war.
But, on the other hand, I’m an optomistic sort, really, and most sincerely HOPE that basic human decency will prevail.
To be sure, we’ll all have to tighten our belts and do without many of the luxuries we’ve come to expect as our ‘just desserts’. We just cannot live ‘on credit’ anymore, individually, nationally or globally. We live on ONE WORLD where all things are inter-related, and THAT day has finally come …
So, rattle them pots & pans you all, ‘cooking in one’s own kitchen’ is due for a rejoicing Renaissance … Eating at home, often, with family and friends, pot luck, casserole swaps, sharing, cutting the fat – all that genuine ‘good food stuff’ will be a welcome solace as all hunker down to weather out this beastly storm as best we can ….
Spaghetti anyone?
Canadada - In theory, your prediction about food seems inevitable but so far, we haven’t seen it in the US.
While fewer people are eating out at white-tablecloth restaurants, the three biggest beneficiaries of the bad economy have been McDonalds, Campbell’s soups and Spam. “Cream of whatever” soup cuisine lives on! The prepared foods at supermarkets are doing very well and seem to be taking the place of restaurant food for some. And the world’s biggest retailer (gah, I hate that store) is running commercials here touting frozen pizza as a money-saving alternative to pizza joint pizza. The savings are undeniable but the spot speaks volumes about the eating (and cooking) habits of the majority of Americans.
I don’t know what it’s going to take to wean millions off their junk food.
Well, I found the cartoon in questionable taste because of how it exploited a very sad situation regarding the long-time pet of a heartbroken woman. There was nothing funny about that incident, and morphing it into political commentary, however it was interpreted, was just inappropriate.
Ah, one always has much to learn from life.
MusEditions’s last blog post..Intentional Poverty
HI, Muse. As an animal lover, I do think it’s sad. However, I value human life far more and even the chimp’s owner — who repeatedly yelled at the dispatcher that police had to kill him (her attempts with a kitchen knife did nothing and it continued to tear the face off her friend) is far more upset about the near-death of her friend, who remains in critical condition. The cops didn’t fire until the chimp attacked one of them too.
Delonas would have been fine in terms of public opinion if he’d left politics out of it. Public opinion is not running in the chimp’s favor. That said, Delonas has never been know for sensititivity and I’ve never understood why his cartoons run on the main gossip page. That’s the Post for you!
Am I missing something?
Sounds like a very lame apology to me.
Like a child apologizing to his parents because the punishment is being dolled out. Half-hearted at best.
As a dear friend used to say to me, “a tiger never changes stripes,” or some such thing.
Re: your comment,
I was just thinking about this on the way home from Whole Foods last night. The amount of resources wasted on packaging alone is mind boggling (as I had one too many packages in my paper bags, and felt the twangs of guilt over our dwindling planetary resources), let alone most of the stuff packaged in that extraordinary waste of resources is worse than garbage for the body.
We have an entire culture built on decimating both our natural resources and our bodies.
Every time I see a Clorox ad I cringe, given the availability of “green products,” but Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, these companies, as well as Kellogg’s and whatever other big name food companies still exist, mean jobs for many, and a way of life for most.
Who will rise and say that Betty Crocker is a toxic vixen on our bodies and the environment, with all those trees felled for her boxes, non-biodegradable red ink melting into the landfills, and inordinate amounts of fats and sugars and chemicals hammering away at our health and well being.
To say it out loud is to be nuts and a zealot.
More important, it threatens American jobs, ones that have yet to be outsourced.
Word Bandit’s last blog post..Sukhavati: Part II
It’s not as lame as the “up yours” apology last week. The way it was buried really irked me. If I didn’t check NY local news pretty often I never would have known it was there. Even then the headline was only Murdoch Statement. Gah.
Your green point is timely. I was just reading this morning at Cook’s Illustrated a green-themed piece of do we really need something to protect the kitchen counters or will a towel do the job. And believe it or not, they said to go out and buy some expensive trivet or something. My favorite “trivets” are those round, cork things that go beneath potted plants. Even the large ones are under a buck at Kmart and they last forever. My bamboo cutting board (thanks to Ming Tsai making me aware) is another good trivet. And sustainable.
You are right, ella. I never meant to imply the chimp’s life was of more worth than the owner’s friend’s. I just felt it was insensitive to make fun of that situation; a sad ending for all concerned. I don’t usually read the Post, so I didn’t know how they usually view the world.
{Puts head back in sand} 
As for racial insensitivity did you read this?: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/25/white-house-watermelon-em_n_169933.html
MusEditions’s last blog post..Intentional Poverty
I haven’t been to HuffPo in days but I’ve been following that story and just finished writing the Quote of the Month. Nothing tops “city-freakin’-mayor”.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Post, other than it’s a Murdoch tabloid. It is the paper that gave us the immortal front-page headline: Headless Body Found in Topless Bar. (And one of the biggest lies in NYC is I never read the Post.)
Good to see you!