"Racist" New Yorker Flagged For "Anti-Capping"

40. Quick, Give Them a Casino

Artist: Zachary Kanin, Deron Grabel
Publishing Date: September 13, 2010
Published In: The New Yorker
People/person Targeted: Native Americans

The cartoon takes an outdated stereotype (Indians attacking cowboys with arrows) and gives it a new twist, with a cowboy-attired executive offering the attackers a casino. But while the cowboy figure has been updated to 21st-century norms, the Native Americans still use arrows to attack, and the insinuation is that the savages must be pacified.

NOTE: A Web site purporting to expose "The 50 Most Racist Political Cartoons" has a surprise entry. The winner of The New Yorker Caption Contest from a few years back made the list at No. 40.  This is like someone from PETA getting nailed for wearing a sweater made out of  Lassie's coat or something. (Feel free to use the comments section to add your own "This is like...")

Actually  the NYer appears twice on this list. Also flagged is the now famous post-election cover cartoon that has our first Muslim President fist-bumping his black militant wife (the vintage Angela Davis fro is classic). While there was some outrage over that image, the hip kids knew it was meant as an ironic thumb-in-the eye to racist douche-bags. 

Seeing the Cap-Contest winner on the list has to be a little unnerving for the mag's brian trust. As is the case with the rest of the high brow NYer, it's Cap-Contest has long been a bastion of nose-in-the-air sensibilities: Nothing even remotely racist, sexist or homophobic need apply. This is why the "real" contest has never been able to compete on a level playing field with our humble but far-more-enjoyable Anti-Cap Contest.

Ironically, the winner of the Anti-Caption contest for this cartoon was: "Yeah, it's the building with the dead Indian hanging from the flagpole."--dwilk  That, of course, is offensive but far less racist. It suggests retaliation for a brutal slaying using armaments closely associated with oppressed Native Americans. (I'm being high brow because it's ironic in this instance.) Oh, and not surprisingly, the best JohnnyB could come up with that week was: "The arrows here are obscene." (The more things change...) 

Anyway, I was up at 4am watching Japan kick the shit out of the Netherlands in the meaningless but slightly entertaining World Baseball Classic. While poking around the net I  found this. Someone once told me my blog would be hugely successful if I set it up as a watchdog for the NYer -- kind of like what  Newshounds is to Fox News -- but that would require that I actually read the magazine.  No time. Don't forget to "spring" your clocks ahead one hour. -- al in la