This cartoon

Today's Page Six cartoon - caricaturing the fantasized shooting of Attorney General Eric Holder - will probably generate considerable controversy. It shows two New York Post editors standing over Holder's body: "I don't guess he'll call us cowards again," one editor says. It is meant to mock an insulting statement from the Attorney General in which he called the American people a 'nation of cowards'. Period. But it will be taken as something else by some - as a thinly veiled expression of racism, equating Holder to a crazy black monkey. This most certainly is not its intent; to those who are offended by the image, we say don't hold your breath waiting for us to apologize. The dead Attorney General is explicitly labeled as 'not monkey' to avoid any confusion on the part of the reader. We do wonder about the fact that there have been no protests or objections to the fact that the 'not monkey' in our previous cartoon had just been assassinated and was lying in a pool of blood. We initially pondered this as a potential problem. However, as there appears to be no concern over our depiction of the murder of politicians we disagree with, we feel at liberty to continue with the metaphor. Holder made us realize one undeniable fact: We were cowards to apologize for our previous cartoon, rather than using it as a gateway to open up a dialogue on race. For that, an apology is due. Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the soon to be deceased opportunists seek to make it something else.