Maybe because it's not funny. Maybe because it's racist. Maybe because it's obscure. Maybe because people don't like political cartoons.

One of the new offensive topics in the country today has to do with a dead monkey and a political cartoon in the New York Post. Basically, an old pet monkey attacked someone and was shot dead by police, and a political cartoonist decided to combine that with stimulus bill going on in Washington D.C. The picture showed the police, standing over a dead monkey with bullet holes in it, saying 'Well, I guess they'll have to find someone else to write their stimulus bill.'

When I first saw it, the newspaper was already telling me it was considered offensive, so I was looking at it with a biased eye. I really didn't get it. I didn't know about the dead monkey or why it had anything to do with Obama, Congress or the stimulus bill. A couple days later, my local newspaper ran a story about the monkey. An old 13-year-old pet monkey attacked someone, or something to that effect, and the police shot it dead. It was strange, but I had to be educated to know why the cartoon was offensive. Even now, I'm not sure what the point was of combining the two stories, or where the humor lies, or just how offensive it really is. I do know it was a lame cartoon. There are many.

It's not clear if the monkey represents Congress or Obama. It's not clear why an attacking monkey is writing stimulus bills or why we even care about this cartoon a day after it's printed. In short, it's not clear.

We could just move on. Call it a lame political cartoon and wait until the next day when they will have another one. But no. We must study it, analyze it, look at it from all angles, so we can see why it is such a lame cartoon and how many ways it could be interpreted. If you call Congress a monkey, that's all right. If you call the President a monkey, it's racist. You can call him a donkey or a jackass, and that's perfectly all right. You can draw big ears on him (like they did with Bush), and that's perfectly all right. But a dead monkey? I'm confused.

I once saw a play called "Dead Monkey." It was also confusing. It involved an older couple, a veterinarian, and a dead monkey. The play starts with the monkey being dead, and over time, it's revealed that the couple had a more than friendly relationship with the monkey. Very weird and not entertaining. Incidentally, I've now seen plays that involve sexual relationships with a horse, a goat, and a monkey. They call that legitimate theatre, and no one is up in arms that those plays exist. I still don't want to try bestiality of any kind or see any of those plays again.

I've also seen other cartoons that are considered offensive. Remember when the guy drew a cartoon involving the prophet Mohammed? That's illegal and offensive to Muslims. Really, it was a cartoon of a bearded guy in a turban with the name Mohammed printed on him, but hey, that bothers a lot of people. Muslims, go out and kill that cartoonist! If something offends you, kill the offender! That will fix everything.

Then, there's the regular comics. I have actually gone to reading them again. I'm not sure why, but it probably has something to do with the recession. Cheap entertainment, maybe? I have an affinity for Lio, F-Minus and Non-Sequitur. Sometimes, they're funny, sometimes not. But I read them. They don't hold a candle to my heyday of comics when I could look at Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County and The Far Side. Most of the comics today are not that funny. They're not offensive, but they're not funny. Does that make them better? Nope, just non-threatening.

Then, there's political cartoons. I look at those, too. Sometimes, they're funny, sometimes not. Sometimes they don't make sense, and sometimes I think they are on the wrong side of the issue. Do I get worked up about it? Nope. I just turn the page, and it's out of my life. Did you know Dr. Suess drew pro-war political cartoons before the United States entered World War II. I've got a whole book of them with slogans of 'Buy War Bonds' with Suessical characters from a propaganda newspaper. Neat, huh? Of course, nowadays, the fact that a modern newspaper is getting any attention is good. Nobody even reads them anymore, but don't worry, you can look at the dead monkey cartoon on the Internet, just like this column.

I guess the point is that this stuff is just beginning. With Obama in office, things that would just be considered confusing or unfunny could suddenly be considered racist or offensive. Are you calling me a monkey? Are saying we should kill the president like that monkey? No one has really said what the monkeys think about the cartoon, but I imagine it's about as much as we should. Enough said? Probably more than enough.

Chris Jungle does not believe monkeys should be pets.