BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Civil Rights Michelle Obama "Ape" Image

There's a very interesting argument going on, that CNN is covering.

Apparently some sites have doctored an image of Michelle Obama to have her look like an ape. They have managed to get a top Google ranking with this image. Some people want Google to deliberately block the image from their results as it bothers them. Others say Google shouldn't randomly block things from their results that some people are bothered by.

What do you think?

CNN Article on Michelle Obama / Ape Image

Here are the images, including this one being discussed as well as several other questionable ones:
Google Results for Michelle Obama / Ape

The image bothers me a lot - but I also know teenagers love to do this sort of thing. It's probably some 15 year old somewhere who has now gotten world wide attention for his 10 seconds of Photoshop work. How could we draw the line about people who "parody" (in either a cruel or a friendly way) images?

She really DOES look like an ape!

That's not nice

Actually, Jim, Michelle Obama looks like an attractive and intelligent lady, which I think is probably what she is.

We constantly see images of celebrities and models which have been altered to make them look more handsome, but you can use the same software to make them look otherwise. As for looking like an ape, I'd say that humans don't.

And as for those who think that being similar to an ape is an insult, I tend to think it's more insulting to apes. Apes aren't perfect, but so many terrible things that humans do that apes don't. Should make ya wonder sometimes why humans think they hold the moral high ground.

Lisa. First of all, I think this discussion should be in the HUMAN-rights section, not the CIVIL-rights. Reason: the broad subject-matter is the tendency of people with strong *tribal* loyalties to dismiss other *tribes* as sub-human. "Tribes" in this context can cover different colours, religions, cultures, social classes, nations, and ethnicities. De-humanizing members of different groups permits tribal loyalists to treat sub-humans like animals.

We see this tendency throughout history, and it is actually no more or less common today than it has ever been. It allows Westerners to allow their nations to slaughter today's Arabs, Africans**, Moslems, etc, either actively by bombs and drones or passively by drownings from flimsy boats in the sea. I say "Westerners" because we on this forum are Westerners; we are (generally speaking) neither better not worse than the members of any other culture. No more morally advanced, that's for sure!

** and their descendants...