Letters to the Times

[mirrorshard]

If you haven't seen this appallingly racist cartoon in the Times, I recommend it for sheer did-they-actually-publish-that value.

Edit: please read the comments before leaving "helpful" corrections. If someone else has already said it, I don't need a "me too". Thank you.

I can't find an address specifically for complaints; comment@thetimes.co.uk gets autorejected. I've sent the following to online.editor@timesonline.co.uk as the apparent next most appropriate thing.



Sir,

I should like to register a complaint about Peter Brookes' cartoon dated 21st March 2009. It clearly depicts Barack Obama as a coconut, which is of course a strong racial slur - a derogatory term meaning "black on the outside, white on the inside".

I am disappointed that a respectable newspaper would publish such slurs, and further disappointed that a respectable newspaper can find nothing better to say about a prominent world leader so soon after his election than to comment on his race.

Yours sincerely,
mirrorshard

Comments

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it clearly *is* meant to be a bowling ball rather than a coconut. It's not a very good cartoon, but the holes are very clearly bowling-ball finger holes.

The resemblance to a coconut would, I suspect, be totally impossible to see if Mr Obama had longer hair. It's only his hair's unfortunate similarity to coconut hair that makes it at all possible to see the coconut resemblance.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I'd probably have seen that if I had seen a bowling ball at any point in the last goodness-knows-how-many years, but I have a coconut right here!

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

To be fair, they really do look quite similar, shape-wise!

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Does it have a lime in it?