A lot has been made in the past few days about an editorial cartoon that the New York Post ran last Wednesday.  If you haven't seen it, shows two police officers standing in front of a chimpanzee who has clearly just been shot by one of the officers.  The one cop says to the other "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

When I first saw this cartoon, I honestly had no clue what the joke was.  The tie between a chimp and the stimulus bill was just too attenuated for me.  Apparently, the comment the cartoonist was trying to make here was that the stimulus bill is so lousy it may have well been written by crazy chimps (which is probably true).  What I also did not understand, however, was why Al Sharpton and others had come out and criticized this cartoon as being racist.  When I read that he claimed that the newspaper was trying to compare President Obama to a chimpanzee (which would obviously carry strong racial overtones), I was shocked.  The impropriety of comparing an African-American to an ape is an entirely moot point, because the simple fact of the matter is that Barack Obama DID NOT WRITE THE STIMULUS BILL!

The first version of the economic stimulus bill that went to the House was written by Congressman David Obey, an old white guy from Wisconsin.  The massive pork in the legislation also serves as evidence that it could only be a creation of Congress.  I doubt very much that Obama really wanted billions for a train to run from Las Vegas to Disneyland, but Senator Harry Reid does.

The real issue driving the backlash against the Post is instead Al Sharpton's desire to get back into the limelight.  For better or worse, Sharpton once considered himself the face and voice of Black America.  Obama's rise to power has eclipsed him completely.  The President's popularity among people of all races is something that Sharpton could never even dream of.

Obama's ascendancy has also dealt a serious blow to Sharpton's cause.  To be sure, the election did not signify the end of racism in this country, or put a stop to discrimination, but it symbolized a paradigm shift, where people turned their attention away from how African-Americans were being held down, looking instead at how they have risen up.  Sharpton's way, shouting "fire" at the slightest hint of smoke and inciting outrage to any perceived indignation is the way of the past.  America is ready to move on and continue building racial cohesion.  Al Sharpton has not been one to reach out and actually strive for unity.  His tirades are aimed more at getting face time in front of the camera, now more than ever.

Sharpton was quoted, referring to the Post, as asking "are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?"  They probably were, but Al Sharpton, not the Post, was the first to insinuate that the monkey might be Obama, and not the legislators who actually wrote the bill.  In doing so he disregarded the facts and played off the notion that people don't really know anything about what actually goes on in government, so as to manufacture a racial incident for his own self-serving agenda.  The real Al Sharpton cares more about his own publicity than actually improving racial relations, and he is now apparently willing to stand in the way of progress in to serve his self-aggrandizing narcisism.