Earl, for your benefit, here is a brief tutorial on editorial cartoons:
1--Only the worst editorial cartoons require a troop of talk show hosts to explain what they "really" mean
2--An editorial cartoon by it's very nature, should encompass an issue in a way that doesn't require the audience to do background research to figure out what the cartoonist meant.
3--The first thing a good editor asks regarding a cartoon is "Will people get it?" The second question is "Does this cartoon make it appear that this paper condones certain actions that are universally deemed harmful to society like rape, murder, child molestation, child abuse, domestic violence, racism, terrorism, and yes, presidential assassination...?"
4--It is absolutely impossible for me to believe that someone at the N.Y. Post didn't see this cartoon and raise a warning flag that it might appear that the monkey was meant to be Obama since it is Obama who is most closely associated with the stimulus plan and since, in general in cartooning, there is usually some kind of at least symbolic correlation between the number of characters or things drawn. For example, one would certainly not associate a single animal, like a monkey, with a large group of people like the House and Senate, unless the monkey were clearly marked in that way. In general, one character corresponds to one character unless you're talking about some well-known symbol like the elephant of the GOP. (By the way, I voted for McCain and I am most often described as conservative, so the idea that I would be biased in favor of Obama is absurd.) So, if someone raised this warning, then I can't help but think that there was a conversation at the N.Y. Post that went like this, "I'm a little concerned that the monkey might be misconstrued to be the president--I mean, a lot of people probably don't even know about the chimp in Connecticut-- and, with him getting shot, it kind of looks like the paper is condoning something universally perceived as an evil, i.e. the assassination of the president," and then some other editor answers something like this "Oh well, it's too close to press time to worry about that, just send the damn thing to press," or this, "So? And your point? I'm too jaded to give a damn what it means..." Or "Let people think it's Obama, hell, we're the New York Post, we're not exactly the arbiters of great journalism anyway and on the occasions when we have risen above our shabby reputation, no one has ever recognized us for it, so frankly I don't care if someone thinks it's the president. If it stirs up a stink, that's all the better for us. We're a tabloid and all press is good press...we don't have any kind of responsibility to maintain some kind of standard..."
This last is particularly worth noting bc the N.Y.Post sometimes does a gutsy story and they do, in fact, find some magnificent intellectual sources and op-ed contributors but, unfortunately for the staff, those wonderful elements are often wrapped in a good bit of garbage. On the one hand, it makes the N.Y. Post less of a haughty pain in the *ss than some of its NYC neighbors. On the other hand, its fine writers, who certainly do exist, are drowned out by the populist roar. This cartoon didn't do anything to change that and may have actually made things worse.
I once refused to publish a cartoon here at the SP because I felt that, to the average person flipping through the paper, it would have made President George W. Bush look like a Nazi supporter. I knew what the cartoonist was getting at. He was riffing on the rampant web chatter regarding Bush's grandfather investing in a bank that eventually operated under Germany's Nazi government, so that his money might have helped indirectly finance the Third Reich. That's a lot to explain in a cartoon and I felt that it would unfairly reflect on President Bush bc even if the ultimate beneficiary of his forefather's money were the Nazis, it is even more true that George W. Bush didn't have anything to do with his grandfather's decision since it happened before he was even born.
My guide for my decision was George Orwell, whose "Five Rules For Clear Writing" I have posted on my office door. Orwell lists the usual rules for clarity, but at the end he says, "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous," meaning that nothing in writing is more important than avoiding suggesting, even accidentally, something as barbarous as a presidential assassination.
The bottom line is, that cartoon should have never seen print and the fact that it did means someone wasn't paying attention or someone wanted to incite the negative response the cartoon has incited.
--Sincerely, The "idiot" to whom you refer, Stephanie Ramage, news editor, The Sunday Paper