CAN WE ALL JUST GET A GRIP?

Some state senator from New York by the name of Eric Adams holds a copy of yesterday's New York Post. His problem: racial stereotyping.

The Post printed a cartoon of a policeman gunning down a violent chimpanzee. Based on the story in the national news about a Connecticut chimp attacking a friend of its owner.

But, no, Adams claims it's comparing Mr. Obama to a chimp. The Blacks as monkeys racial comparison. And he's appalled.

So am I. What difference does color make today? Isn't our President part White/part Black? Didn't a whole heckuva lot of Whites vote for him? Plus, the only reference to race in the whole campaign was brought up by Mr. Obama when he said he didn't look like the Presidents on US currency.

Let's get over it. Yes, the way that Blacks and Native Americans were treated in our country was wrong But a lot of other minorities were treated badly, too. Just check out how some Irish or Italians were persecuted. But that wasn't any of us that did the disservices to them or the Blacks or the Native Americans. Let's move on.

I'm not even going to banter about how voting for Mr. Obama just because he is Black is any worse than voting for John McCain because he isn't . If you want to wail about racism, it works both ways

Maybe I'm over-reacting. I do that, you know. But Senator Adams might have missed the boat. You see, the caption stated "next time they'll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill." To me, the article was criticizing, as satire does, the Democrats who penned the legislation. Not the signer of the bill, the President.

But overall, I'd have to say it was a pretty stupid political cartoon. Besides, I think monkeys are smarter than thinking they can spend their way out of debt.

Yet as an Arizona Republic writer illustrated, this whole idea of bail outs in any form reverses Kennedy's "Ask what you can do for your country" mantra. It's now "ask what your country can do for you."