Bush Chimp
It’s OK for progressives to portray Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, etc., with racist imagery; but heaven help you if anyone does the same to one of their own. Then it becomes racism.
From National Review Online:
Salon authors wrote that Bush " looked like a petrified chimp." They wrote that he displayed "a willingness to humiliate oneself publicly rivaled only by a circus chimp."
And if that's too subtle for you, consider that Salon published an article about Bush headlined "Hail to the Chimp," which a long discursus on the theme "Bush = Chimp." They slugged the story "Curious George" (oh, the wit!) and noted that "he looks like he should be peering under Jane Goodall's shirt in an Apple Computer advertisement or flying back to the castle of the Wicked Witch with Toto in his clutches," lampooned him as "commander-in-chimp," noted his "propensity for striking chimplike poses," etc., etc. So taken were the editors of Salon with their chimping of the president that they included the piece in their annual "Best of Salon" feature, boasting: "Our fearless coverage of 9/11 ranged from Ground Zero to Afghanistan. We explained "Mulholland Drive," exposed Silicon Valley and asked if Bush was a chimp." These weren't the rantings of anonymous comment posters, but the words of Salon's writers and editors.
The fact that Mrs. Obama is black adds a nasty racist taint to the image that was made of her, to be sure, though it is worth noting that our sensitive progressive friends have not abstained from using racist imagery to debase Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, et al. At most, what Miss Williams has discovered here is that people who operate blogs based in distant lands often are a good deal less sensitive about race than Americans are. You don't say?