Spike Lee wants boycott of New York Post over chimpanzee cartoon

New York, Feb.21 (ANI): Filmmaker Spike Lee called on celebrities to join a boycott of the New York Post Friday during a raucous protest of a racially charged cartoon.

Joined by his 11-year-old son, Lee told a crowd of about 300 people that he has bought the tabloid in the past - but no more.

According to the New York Daily News, he suggested athletes and entertainers shun the paper's writers because of Wednesday's cartoon, which compared President Obama with a crazed chimp by some interpretations.

"This is not the end," Lee told the demonstrators, who marched in front of the Post's offices near Rockefeller Center shouting, "Shut it down."

"It's not just black folks. It's an insult to everybody."

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who called the paper "a racist rag sheet" and TV judge Greg Mathis, who said executives from parent company News Corp. must be held accountable, joined him.

The protest leaders are calling on advertisers to boycott the Post and are vowing to take their money out of banks that buy space in the paper.

The single-panel cartoon by Sean Delonas showed the bloody body of the chimp responsible for Monday's attack on a woman in Connecticut, with two cops.

"They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one of the cops says.

The paper printed a half-hearted "apology" for offending anyone with the cartoon Friday - but protesters said the note, with its dig at Sharpton, was insincere. (ANI)