Post apologizes, sort of, for cartoon

NEW YORK, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- The New York Post apologized Thursday for offending those who saw a cartoon of a chimpanzee as racist, while saying no racism was intended.

The apology pointedly excluded the Rev. Al Sharpton, although not by name. The newspaper said "no apology is due" people who saw the cartoon as a chance for "payback" for past disputes with the Post.

"Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon -- even as the opportunists seek to make it something else," the newspaper said.

The cartoon, which ran Wednesday, showed two police officers standing over the body of the chimpanzee shot Monday in Connecticut after it attacked a woman.

"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.

Critics said the chimpanzee appeared to be standing in for President Barack Obama, the first black to hold that office.

"This was most certainly not its intent," the Post said in an apology published after a day of protest demonstrations outside its offices.

Sharpton, in a response to the Post apology, said he planned to go forward with a rally scheduled for Friday afternoon outside the newspaper. He said the newspaper should have "taken a more mature position when the issue was first raised."

In addition to Sharpton and the NAACP, New York Gov. David Paterson, the first black to hold the job, had criticized the cartoon.