Row blows up over Obama chimp cartoon

A storm has blown up over a cartoon published in the New York Post - proprietor: Rupert Murdoch – which, according to its detractors, could be seen to portray President Barack Obama as an ape. The offending item (pictured) links two events together - the shooting by Connecticut police on Monday of a pet chimpanzee that viciously attacked its owner's friend, and the passing of President Obama's $787bn stimulus bill. The caption read: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

This prompted Rev Al Sharpton, the Baptist minister and veteran civil rights activist, to accuse the newspaper of racism. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best, given the historic racist attacks [on] African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys".

He added: "Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama ... and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder: are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?... The Post should at best clarify what point they were trying to make, or in fact reprimand their cartoonist."

David Paterson, the governor of New York state, also joined the fray, telling a local television station that it was "very important for the New York Post to explain what the cartoon was intended to portray".

However, the Post's editor-in-chief, Col Allen, noting Sharpton's love of media attention, batted off the claim. "The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut," he said. "It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

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