Cartoonist in the Mist

I wonder how Sean Delonas would feel if someone published a cartoon of him sitting at his desk masturbating, with someone behind him poised to stab him in the back, and a caption that read: “They’ll have to find someone else to draw the next racist cartoon.”

Sean Delonas and the New York Post are exercising the American right to freedom of speech… much as the slain pet chimpanzee that inspired Delonas’ “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” cartoon was exercising its right to rampage.

Too bad Delonas wasn’t around in Los Angeles during the 1992 race riots sparked by the “not guilty” verdict of white cops who beat black motorist Rodney King to a bloody pulp. Delonas could have tapped the rich vein of humor in King’s nine skull fractures, shattered eye socket and cheekbone, broken leg, concussion, injuries to both knees and nerve damage that left his face partially paralyzed. And Delonas also would have enjoyed the LAPD radio transmissions regarding the beating incident, in which cops crowed “it was Gorillas in the Mist out there.”

By plunging his head into the mist of racism, Sean Delonas is not, however, merely exercising a right. He is illustrating that he is blind to the history of oppression and pain suffered by blacks in America, and that he is cavalier about their feelings. Delonas may as well be a chimpanzee himself, one that is playing with matches at a gas station, too much of a narcissistic publicity seeker to realize that racism can have inflammatory results. The Six days of riots that followed the infamous King-beating verdict of 1992 resulted in 42 murders, 700 buildings destroyed by fire, and almost $1 billion in property damage.

Delonas also is blind to the significance of evolving race relations in America. Electing a black President is a good thing, Sean… it means American racists no longer may justify their bigotry by comparing a dark-skinned human being to a monkey… or confusing a mean-spirited lapse of judgment with humor.

In spite of his protestations that he did not intend to make a racist statement, Delonas will suffer irreparable damage to his reputation. His ugly cartoon, and the New York Post’s absurd rejection of Al Sharpton’s objection to it, will forever brand him a cartoonist in the mist.