“…According to the Associated Press, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous called Delonas’ cartoon ‘an invitation to assassination [of President Barack Obama]‘ and called for ’serious disciplinary action’ against the Post, including the firing of the cartoonist and editor Col Allen. While many in our profession have questioned the efficacy of Delonas’ cartoon and the judgment of his editors for publishing it, the suggestion that he was somehow trying to incite the assassination of President Obama is simply not credible.”

And I have to agree. The cartoon may be in poor taste, but the NAACP is giving Sean Delonas more credit than he deserves, methinks. I seriously doubt assassination was on his mind when he drew this. Dissent, perhaps – and last I checked, dissent was still allowed in this country. Personally, I think it’s a crappy cartoon. I understand he was trying to draw a parallel to the actual chimp shooting, which was still fresh in people’s minds at the time this was published, but it’s a weak one. Who are the police supposed to represent in this picture? Congress? Republicans? The stimulus bill was a done deal when this saw print; Delonas appears to treat it as if it weren’t. If he’s against the bill, he should’ve found a clearer way to express it than this, which just comes across as a cheap way to take advantage of a wacky yet relatively minor news item for some easy controversy. And whaddya know – he got it.