Chimp cartoon 'invitation to assassinate Obama'

The head of America’s National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People said today a newspaper’s controversial dead chimp cartoon was an invitation to assassinate US President Barack Obama and urged readers to boycott the tabloid.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, the civil rights group’s president, also called on the New York Post to remove editor-in-chief Col Allan, as well as long-time cartoonist Sean Delonas.

The newspaper apologised to anyone who might have been offended by the image printed on Wednesday, which some say likened the nation’s first black president to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police in Connecticut.

Mr Jealous said the cartoon was “an invitation to assassination”.

Following protests by notable figures including director Spike Lee, the paper posted an editorial on its website saying the cartoon was meant to mock the federal economic stimulus bill, but “to those who were offended by the image, we apologise”.

Critics said the cartoon recalled historical racial stereotypes of African-Americans depicted as monkeys.

Mr Jealous called the editorial “a half of an apology, without elaboration”.

The drawing, he said, “picks off the scabs of all the racial wounds”.

He spoke as the NAACP gathered for its annual meeting in New York, where it was founded a century ago.

NAACP officials said that if the Post did not take “serious disciplinary action”, the group would reach out to organisations across the country in its efforts against the tabloid.

NAACP chairman Julian Bond called the publication of the cartoon “thoughtlessness taken to the extreme. ... Anyone who is not offended by it does not have any sensitivity”.