mirrorshard: (Autumn skin)
Somhairle Kelly ([personal profile] mirrorshard) wrote2009-03-23 02:02 pm
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Letters to the Times

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,
[livejournal.com profile] mirrorshard

[identity profile] purplepiano.livejournal.com 2009-03-23 05:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Apart from any racial overtone, I think that cartoon's just a bit rubbish! Not very funny, a bit obscure and doesn't make any sort of serious point. Though I often find political cartoons smug and annoying anyway. I guess Obama is still at the un-satirisable stage.