Rupert Murdoch has apologized for Sean Delonas' cartoon, which depicted a chimp shot by police with the punchline, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." I've already expressed my feelings about newspapers apologizing for material that is merely offensive rather than factually incorrect. I think it sets a bad precedent, even in circumstances such as these.
Gawker's retrospective of some of Delonas' other work inspired me to look through some of his archives, which honestly make the chimp cartoon seem quite mild. This cartoon, which ran on March 19, 1999 however, has to be my "favorite":
I just love that Delonas outsources the dismemberment of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to a pair of sinister, large-schnozzed, Yiddish accented, evil Jewish quacks. I look at this cartoon, and I can't, for the life of me, figure out what Delonas has against Farrakhan. On the Jewish people, for instance, they appear to be in complete agreement. The above cartoon would have been at home in any Klan newsletter.
I mean there's more than a decade of this stuff. I find it so strange that people are just starting to get outraged about this guy.
-- A. Serwer
