'NY Post' in Obama-Chimp-Stimulus-Racism Flap

America's most simplistically offensive editorial cartoonist strikes again! The New York Post's Sean Delonas took some time out from his usual pursuit of ridiculing gay people to ink a panel that is being decried as a piece of unreconstructed racism. This is it:

The dead chimpanzee, of course, references the great ape that police shot dead after it mauled a woman in Connecticut Monday. But critics -- including Official Black People Spokesman for Life Al Sharpton -- say it's also meant to evoke Barack Obama, the prime mover behind the stimulus bill. "Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?" said Sharpton in a statement.

Did Delonas mean to say Obama is a crazed monkey? It's hard to say; his cartoons seldom make much sense, and he almost never speaks up to defend them . My guess: He'll celebrate the "controversy" tomorrow with a cartoon lampooning Sharpton.

Update (via Romenesko): Post editor Col Allan actually addressed the issue, saying the cartoon is a "clear parody of a current news event" that "broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy," and nothing more.