Roll Call Of The Righteous

Here we go ...

Some critics called the cartoon racist and said it trivialised a tragedy which left Charla Nash with what police called "life-changing" facial injuries.

Others said the cartoon suggests that Obama should be assassinated, with critics urging a boycott of the Post and the companies advertising in it.

Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said: "How could the Post let this cartoon pass as satire? To compare the nation's first African-American commander in chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel."

State Senator Eric Adams called it a "throwback" to the days when black men were lynched.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, an influential civil rights leader, called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys".

Phones at the Post's Manhattan office rang all day with angry callers, while protesters also picketed outside - demanding an apology and a boycott and chanting: "Shut the Post down."

Col Allan, the paper's editor-in-chief, defended the work... "The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

Here's the cartoon, for what it's worth: