Cartoonist Ted Rall is dealing with the backlash he created after he posted a controversial cartoon depicting the president with seemingly apelike features to the Daily Kos site, a liberal political blog.
According to The Grio, the Daily Kos pounced on the artist, slamming him for the drawing and threatening to rescind his publishing privileges.
"Your depiction of Barack Obama as ape-like is intolerable. Being critical of Obama, even ferociously so, is not the problem. Through British and American history, blacks have been subject to racist depictions of themselves as monkeys and apes. No excuse is acceptable for replicating that history, no matter what your intent. If it happens again, your posting privileges will be suspended," the site’s administrator wrote.
Rall, who identifies as a liberal, brushed off the site’s rebuke before calling it out for not paying him for the submission.
"Anyone familiar with me and my work knows I’m not racist," he said. "My criticisms of the president are unrelated to his race, and to say otherwise in the absence of evidence is disgusting."
"It should be noted that my editors at a variety of American newspapers, magazines and websites, almost all of whom are left of center politically, some of whom are black and many of whom voted for Obama, have never expressed the slightest concern about the way I draw the president," Rall added, according to The Grio.
Read more at The Grio.