Glenn Beck guest cites Obama's "surrender monkey" speech

British journalist James Delingpole refers to the president's Cairo talk as "the Cairo surrender monkey speech"

Published October 23, 2009 9:24PM (EDT)

A guest on Glenn Beck's show, British journalist James Delingpole, just referred to President Obama's Cairo speech as "the Cairo surrender monkey speech."

Yes, yes, I'm aware of the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" line from the Simpsons. But it's not like Obama is French, and the discussion on Beck's show at the time didn't generally have anything to do with surrendering at all.

I'm willing to concede this might be perfectly harmless, just a case of me being oversensitive. In general, though, you'd think that when referring to the first black U.S. president, people might want to avoid monkey metaphors. (Just ask Roy Blunt how well they've worked out for him.) Seems like there are plenty of ways to accuse Obama of being soft on terror, or whatever else you want to accuse him of, without getting into problematic imagery.


By Mike Madden

Mike Madden is Salon's Washington correspondent. A complete listing of his articles is here. Follow him on Twitter here.

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