Most Americans remember the little monkey we read about in children’s books. Curious George is probably as much of a national phenomenon as Charlie Brown, at least among those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s.
Let’s travel in time to the late 1990s. Shortly after George W. Bush was elected, someone notices a more than casual resemblance between Curious George and our Commander in Chief. We don’t know who that person is (several have claimed credit), but the collage of photographs he assembles delights many, and quickly spreads across the Internet. We see it everywhere, and once something has been distributed so widely, it’s nearly impossible for it to ever go away.
Fast-forward to 2007. The picture collage is still out there. I’ve just proven to myself that it can in fact be found quite easily by the hastiest of Google searches.
Oddly enough, at the time, no one saw anything terribly offensive about this collage. In fact, to me, the Curious George stuffed animal at left center looks a lot like George Bush, having the same beady eyes, the same slope to his eyebrows, and the same moderately clueless facial expression. Approval ratings were at an all-time low, and people were looking for any comic relief that might mitigate the shame of having elected a man who can’t even correctly pronounce the word “nuclear” to our nation’s highest office. (Oh, right. Again. Carter couldn’t pronounce it, either.)
Despite the fact that monkeys, during less enlightened times, were used in many contexts as derogatory symbols for black people, no one seemed to catch on to the racist overtones of this comparison. Of course, there weren’t any racist overtones, but that’s never stopped people from freaking out over this sort of thing before. It always puzzled me, each time I thought about this image, that not once did anyone play the race card in reference to it. Even today, when the image shows up on message boards or on someone’s office wall, no one says, “Oh, that’s RACIST! Take it DOWN!” They laugh, or they frown, but they eventually just move on.
Something interesting happened in the last few days. In Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta which I pass through on my daily commute, is a small bar and grill known as “Mulligan’s Food and Spirits.” Located at 698 Roswell Street Southeast, Mulligan’s is not the sort of place you’d take a woman on a first date. The crowd is blue-collar and a little rough around the edges. Smoking is encouraged, not just permitted. The sign out front generally expresses the feelings of bar owner Mike Norman. “I WISH HILLARY HAD MARRIED O.J.” and “BORDER PATROL EAT FREE” were on the sign recently.
The trouble started when Norman started selling a mock campaign T-shirt featuring an image of Curious George and the words, “OBAMA IN 2008.” The image used is a classic one of George eating a banana. Here’s a picture of the shirt.
When I first saw this, I laughed. I took one look at Curious George and the photo of Obama the newscast displayed, and I could immediately see the resemblance. In this case, it’s the ears, the hairline and the smile that really make the comparison work. Here are two images I chose which seem to bring that home:
Of course, I didn’t laugh very long before the rest of the news story registered in my mind. People were objecting, but were also staging protests demanding that the sale of the shirts stop. Bloggers were calling for the bar’s sign to be censored, too, now that so much attention had been called to it. The consensus among all the news outlets seems to be that Mike Norman must be a racist, and intended to use a 1940s-era racial slur against Obama.
Despite the rapidly-accelerating downhill snowball of condemnation rushing toward my computer over the Internet, I did not and still do not see this as racist. It might be in bad taste considering how some rabid hair-trigger anti-racist activists have interpreted it, but comparing a man to a monkey is neither racist nor offensive. Minstrel shows featuring end men in black-face are racist and offensive. Lynchings and slavery and discrimination are racist and offensive. The N-word is racist and offensive. Norman himself, asked whether he had any racist intentions, said that he didn’t. He pointed out the resemblance and said he thought the shirt was “cute.” I have a gut feeling that if the shirt had been racially motivated, Norman is the sort of man who would make no bones about admitting it. He’s certainly never bitten his tongue before.
Playing devil’s advocate, though, let’s assume that I’m wrong. Let’s assume that Mike Norman, in a fit of racial anger, decided he’d call up the most hateful simian racist symbol he could imagine and put it on a T-shirt with Obama’s name. Does he have a right to do that? Yes! I hate racism. I hate prejudice. However, I hate the suppression of free speech even more.
While I don’t think the T-shirt is racist, Mulligan’s, thanks to a lot of activists and receptive media, has now become a symbol (at least for me) of free speech under siege. By writing this blog, I’m leaving no doubt as to my opinion. An apparently innocent monkey joke has turned into a cause for a ridiculously large number of easily-offended, clueless people desperately in search of something to stand for. I think I’ll go by Mulligan’s on my way home from work, have a beer, buy myself a T-shirt, and thumb my nose at the protesters. Someone’s got to do it. Mike Norman’s going to need money for a lawyer if the crazies get their way.
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But Bush IS a monkey, and a white aristo Merkin. Caricaturing Obama as a monkey is too close to the white American racist stereotype
Here’s a monkey
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If a Gollywog had been used instead of a popular and likeable cartoon monkey then I’d understand the fuss: as it stands, there’s nothing wrong with that harmless joke! It’s amazing how some folk having nothing better to do than walk around wearing, well, not rose-tint glasses but the ‘anti-racist’ equivalent (No idea what colour they should be, ironaically!) so that they see a problem everywhere they look, even in places that it ain’t so.
If you ever read any Terry Pratchett discworld books, be sure to look out of the character Reg Shoe. He’s a zombie, always banging on about anti-vitalism (“dead people have rights too!”); this sort of thing always puts me in mind of Reg 🙂
Enjoy the t-shirt!
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I had a couple of books about Zozo and the Man with the Big Yellow Hat – apparently that’s the name Curious George was given in the British editions 🙁http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curious_George)
I can’t be doing with those who are determined to see offence where none is intended, especially if they’re being so patronising as to be offended on someone else’s behalf.
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Good job there are no Orangutans reading this: they’d get offended at the ‘M’ word.
😉
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Lord H you are somewhat incorrect. No self respecting racist would use a lovable, clever, endearing cartoon monkey as an insult. However since I do not regard Obama as lovable, clever or endearing (I do have to agree with the cartoon comparison though) I submit that perhaps an Andean condor might have been in order. Far reaching and badly misunderstood, even scavengers have a place in the food chain.
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I’ve been thinking further about this.
A racist discriminates between people on the basis of their skin colour or their nationality.
A non-racist is ‘colour-blind’ and treats all people the same, regardless.
Therefore it’s either acceptable to depict *anyone* as a monkey, or none. To discriminate and accept the depiction of a white person as a monkey but object to the same depiction of a coloured person is a racist point of view.
Racism (or racialism) works both ways.
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cartoons were always serving tthe need to critisize our leaders and this represetation is selling like mad in the local markets of europe
http://i43.tinypic.com/904r36.jpg
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To all you dirty south white trash who think there’s nothing wronge with this I hope you all go to mulligans have a steak and choke on it.
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Wow. With a well-reasoned, articulately stated argument like that one, Danielle, I don’t see how anyone could possibly disagree with you. Anyone think I’m wronge?
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When that image of bush being compared to a monkey cropped up on the net, people were laughing because the meaning was obvious: “Bush has the intellect of a monkey and the following comparison images illustrate this”. It was clear that his lack of intelligence was the punchline, and lets face it, the liberals had a point: He was a strong-minded leader, but all it takes is one youtube search to show that the guy said a lot of dumb **** during his presidency. Now I pose the following question to the teabaggers or whoever that finds this “curious obama” garbage funny: What’s the message? What’s the punchline? The guy may make some odd decisions as president, but from the start he was clearly a very intelligent “superman” type candidate. Why compare him to a monkey? The answer is that certain people just think he resembles one. Oh, I can see it. He’s brown. He smiles. He has a straight hairline. His ears are big. Dude definitely looks like an ape.
Not really, but many think so regardless. Their great, great grandparents were thinking the exact same thing about blacks in the early 1900’s, only they didn’t hide it behind a veil of “hip” political correctness. The fact is, whether you realize it or not, comparing a black guy to a chimp just based on “resemblance” brings up all sorts of issues. You could be saying that blacks look less evolved. Or that they look primitive. See the problem here?
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BTW, “political correctness” was a mistake. I meant to say “political incorrectness”.
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Nick, I appreciate a well-reasoned argument (and I’m not being sarcastic this time, as I was with Danielle). You’ve obviously given this a great deal of thought.
One could, as you do, posit that comparing a man who happens to be black with a monkey brings up issues. However, in the final analysis, I think it’s the viewer, and his own predisposition to either racial hypersensitivity or political correctness, who is really raising those issues. In other words, it’s my position that such offense is inferred far more often than it is actually implied.
Thanks for a very interesting perspective!
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No problem, thanks for the civil reply. I just want to add that although you could be right, it is important for everyone, even self-proclaimed anti-racists, to understand just how deeply psychological and subtle the new racism is today (I’m not necessarily addressing this to you BTW). You don’t have to commit a hate crime or call a black guy a nigger in order to be racist now, of course. Subtle ethnocentricism hidden behind a veil of political correctness (not a typo this time) can be just as damaging to a minority as the more overt, radical forms of racism. When you see an old southern guy sell T-shirts of Obama being compared to a monkey out of pure physical appearance, it forces me to ask some questions that the old man probably didn’t even ask himself. Such as, “given its historical context, am I really doing anyone any GOOD by putting this image in the public eye again?” Or, “why do I find this black man’s face and hairline similar to that of a cartoon chimp’s?” and “given that I’m anti-racist and do not see color/race, why not compare Obama to Alfred E. Numan?”
Things like that.