So the New York Post has, uh, well, kinda sorta almost but not really apologizes for the dead monkey-stimulus cartoon:

Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon - caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut - has created considerable controversy.

It shows two police officers standing over the chimp’s body: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” one officer says.

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Here’s the thing.  Apologizing to people because they took offense is not the same thing as apologizing for doing something wrong.  It’s just a thinly veiled expression of contempt for the other person’s outrage.

Sometimes denial is just being in denial — even as the Post seeks to pretend it’s an apology.

And sometimes racism is just racism, even if those responsible have no clue.

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