What is it with the chimp?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/martin.cartoon/index.html?iref=mpstoryview


I must say that, observing the cartoon, I can definitely understand why it would be very offensive to most people. It lacks wit, isn't very funny, and it lack any clear target for its joke, leaving us with nothing but to suspect that the cartoonist is in fact comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee. I am unsettled that a respectable newspaper such as the New York Post would publish this cartoon, but I do give them credit for not apologizing for it and standing by their cartoonist. In the field of journalism the publisher's ought to have a great amount of loyalty to their staff, and this newspaper has exhibited that. Nonetheless, this cartoon is very bizarre and I fail to see how it "broadly mocks" Washington's attempts to jumpstart the economy. If that were the case, then the cartoonist should have scrawled "Congress" across the damn chimp's belly. There seems to be no joke being made here other than that the President is black and somehow that makes him comparable to a chimpanzee.
All this said, I don't appreciate the amount of attention that this cartoon is recieving. Yes, I do find it offensive, but at the end of the day it is scribbled satire and doesn't really amount to anything impactful. Hell, the controversy this thing has drawn outweighed the publicity on the stimulus package being passed, which to me is stupefying. It's a petty distraction, something that's easy for us to rant and rage against because it isn't a tangible issue, simply a case of bad taste.