Did Rupert Murdoch Knowingly Run a Racist Cartoon in the New York Post?

A cartoon by Sean Delonas in today's New York Post, owned and run by Rupert Murdoch, is beginning to generate significant outrage. Condemnation of this cartoon has already come from all across the spectrum, from Reverend Al Sharpton to the Huffington Post to the British paper, "The Guardian". The cartoon plays off of the recent tragic events in Stamford, Connecticut where a domesticated chimpanzee attacked the owner's friend leaving the friend in the hospital fighting for her life. After the owner stabbed the chimpanzee multiple times to get the chimp off her friend the chimpanzee ran off into the neighborhood and had to be eventually shot and killed by police. The cartoon likened the author (an apparent reference to President Barack Obama) of the stimulus bill with an out of control chimpanzee (a reference to the events in Connecticut) that needed to be shot and killed.

Besides some of the obvious overtones of this cartoon, a couple of the more subtle aspects are equally quite disturbing and could lead many people to question the author's intent. Both cops in the cartoon are white and the "Beware of Dog" sign on the telephone pole in the cartoon is a very subtle and historical reference to the South using dogs to control and terrorize blacks. Even under South African apartheid, the use of police dogs to terrorize black people was a well known and open policy. Some might have given the cartoonist a little more slack if he had not used the symbolism of the "Beware of Dog" sign and made one of the two cops black.