The Living Consequences

The New York Post, in its infinite wisdom, ran the cartoon shown here in today’s edition.

The illustration refers to yesterday’s shooting by police in Connecticut of an out-of-control chimpanzee, while the dialogue refers to President Obama’s signature legislative item, the stimulus bill which he signed on the same day.

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Racialicious has an insightful post, originally written at What Tami Said, arguing that the superficiality of the debate about race in our society is encouraged by the way the media approaches race.

However, the root cause turns out to be not the media itself, but the public consuming the media. For the post explains that most Americans are passive consumers of information with remarkably short attention spans, and as a result, the media tends to present news and debate in limited and formulaic ways that appeal to most consumers.