Marietta (Georgia) bar owner Mike Norman may get hit with copyright infringement by the Curious George publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt over his Obama 08 t-shirt.
Norman, the owner of Mulligan's Bar and Grill in Cobb County, "designed" the Curious George Obama 08 t-shirt but claims it isn't racist. He did mention that he was "saying out loud what everyone else in town whispers" and also, according to the Atlantic Journal, "acknowledged the imagery's Jim Crow roots but sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey."
Norman went on to say "we're not living in the 1940's. Look at him (Obama)... the hairline, the ears, -- he looks just like Curious George".
Is Norman correct, that a t-shirt depicting Senator Obama as a monkey albeit Curious George, isn't offensive and can't be construed as being the same ilk as the extremely racist and highly offensive Jim Crow charactertures from the recent past?
Norman himself answered our question when he intimated that his t-shirt was something that "everyone else in town whispers". Protesters have lined up, such as the virulently anti-semitic Nation of Islam, to call Norman's Curious George Obama 08 t-shirt offensive and racist.
President Bush is not immune from comparisons to a monkey. How is comparing Bush to a monkey different than Norman's Obama as Curious George?
Granted you can't call these photos racist but are they insensitive and/or offensive?
Read more Curious George - Obama 08 : Publisher Mulls Legal Action at DBKP.com
By LBG
Image - Jim Crow
Image - Bush - Planet of the Apes
Image - Bush - Monkey
Image - Atlanta Journal
Source - Atlanta Journal
Source - DBKP - Curious George Obama 08 T-Shirt : Nation of Islam Protests
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