Newspaper apologises for showing Obamas as apes

[fierytrini]

And in today's news...

http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201403241828-0023581

A Belgian newspaper apologised Monday following outcry over an image showing US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with their faces photoshopped to look like apes. The image was printed alongside another that implies President Obama sells marijuana.

The images appeared in Flemish newspaper De Morgen's Saturday edition, in a satire section called "The Obama Herald". The paper joked that Russian President Vladimir Putin sent in the photos. The controversy comes ahead of an official visit by President Obama to Belgium. He is scheduled to arrive in Brussels Tuesday.

The apology from De Morgen's editors came in an article entitled, "Is De Morgen Racist?". They called the image a "tasteless joke", explaining, "We wrongly assumed that racism is no longer accepted, and that in this way it could be the subject of a joke".

[leslie]

I am not outraged by the buffoonery and outright stupidity displayed by the Belgian newspaper.  I really don’t expect most whites, especially in Europe to think differently.  Because the black population is small in Europe, and especially in countries that do not bear much colonial ties, they tend to be less politically correct than the U.S., for example, and so you find greater instances of them displaying their racism overtly and in very nasty ways. Black footballers playing in Europe are notable targets. If the editors of the paper thought that that was funny and that it was okay to run it in their paper because “racism is no longer accepted”, then their so-called apology is useless. Not that I would have believed them anyway.