As you probably already know, Obama is in the Scandinavian countries (Belgium and The Netherlands) to attend EU and NATO summits.
According to The Guardian, Obama’s entourage of 900, including 45 vehicles and 3 planes, is estimated to cost Belgium more than €10m (more than $13.78 million).
Back in the mass-delusion days of the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama was greeted in the U.S. and in Europe by huge crowds of giddy besotted worshippers numbering in the tens of thousands, like this one in Berlin:
July 24, 2008, Berlin
Sic transit gloria.
At Obama’s press conference in the Hague, Netherlands, only one person applauded.
On March 22, 2014, the Dutch newspaper De Morgen (Tomorrow) dedicated a whole section, “The Daily Herald,” to Obama’s upcoming visit to Belgium in its weekend edition. The weekly satirical page “The Daily Herald” was renamed “The Obama Herald” for the occasion.
The page contains fictitious tweets by Obama, some articles and also a cartoon — a photo that Russian president Vladimir Putin allegedly sent to De Morgen, showing Barack and Michelle with a monkey face.
Michael Torfs reports, March 24, 2014, that De Morgen, “a left-wing daily” with “a solid anti-racist reputation in Belgium,” has issued an apology for the cartoon after the digital collage comparing the Obamas with monkeys “triggered numerous international reactions.”
De Morgen says they made an error of judgment about their “tasteless joke.”
On page 2, the daily writes that “when you consider the fragment apart from its context, which is a properly worked out satirical section, then you don’t see the joke but just a picture evoking sheer racism. That was a risk we didn’t consider enough beforehand. We wrongly assumed that racism is no longer tolerated anywhere, and that as a result it could be the subject of a joke,” but we overlooked the fact that in the United States, the comparison between blacks and monkeys is still something that pops up regularly today.
In other words, at the same time as De Morgen apologizes for its “tasteless joke,” the newspaper blames anyone who might be offended by the cartoon on those racist Americans who still “regularly” compare blacks with monkeys.
I don’t call that an apology, do you?
SHAME ON YOU, De Morgen, for your racist cartoon dehumanizing an American president, for which you ALONE are responsible.
And DOUBLY SHAME ON YOU, De Morgen, for twisting your “apology” around to scapegoat the American people.
You make me ill.
H/t FOTM’s josephbc69 for The Guardian.
~Eowyn
