Special little snowflakes have a major meltdown, blame global warming.

The cartoon above ran in today’s Boston Herald. Like the vast majority of editorial cartoons, it’s pretty dumb. Unlike the vast majority, it has been widely denounced and (sort of) apologized for, on account of its boneheaded choice of toothpaste flavors.

Obviously, using watermelon as the punch line was a terrible idea. The question is whether something worse than an inadvertent slip-up is at work here. Ta-Nehisi Coates says yes, there was:

Get it? It’s funny because of the original, and informative, insight that only black people like watermelon. https://t.co/F8QwwnIWbQ

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 1, 2014

Sorry, cartoonist claiming the “racial element” was nowhere in his head is lying. Lying is a thing that humans do. So is racism.[...]

The cartoonist, Jerry Holbert, explained that he came up with watermelon because he was thinking of his kids’ Colgate watermelon-flavor toothpaste. Possibly he made a subconscious connection between a black president and watermelon. But it seems very doubtful this was his intent.

Dapandico | October 2, 2014 8:29 am

read full article at source: http://weaselzippers.us/201370-liberal-boston-herald-cartoonists-dog-whistle-racism-was-just-a-mistake/