Chimp Rage Focused on 'NY Post' Editor

Has Col Allan arrived at a Don Imus moment?

In the past, whatever opprobrium the hard-boiled New York Post editor encountered -- whether it was accusations of graft at Page Six or complaints of rabid homophobia -- he was able to weather it without acknowledgment, much less apology.

But the outcry over last week's editorial cartoon connecting Travis the dead chimpanzee to Barack Obama's stimulus plan isn't fading on its own -- and the people behind it swear it won't until Allan is gone.

On Saturday, Benjamin Todd Jealous, the head of the NAACP, called for Allan, who's edited the Post since 2001, to step down. The group threatened to lead a widespread boycott against the paper unless "serious disciplinary action" is taken. GLAAD, which has often protested the Post's editorial cartoons, issued its own call to action.

Post owner Rupert Murdoch has a pretty solid record of standing behind his talent and laughing off controversies he considers silly, and the Post, as a tabloid, has not just a license but a mission to be outrageous. But Michael Wolff, who literally wrote the book on Murdoch, continues to predict that the News Corp. owner will sacrifice Allan -- not merely to the gods of political correctness but to the gods of business as well. (The New York Times notes today that there is a growing "sense of urgency in the News Corporation executive suite about stemming The Post's losses," which Wolff pegs at $60 million to $80 million a year.)

On MSNBC's Countdown Friday, Wolff told Keith Olbermann that Allan had made a critical misstep by issuing a snarky apology that doubled as a slap at Al Sharpton. "Suddenly, we have a situation which is, I guess, sort of Imus-like in its snowball effect," said Wolff.

And we all know how that one ended up.