Do I think Delonas meant to convey all these layers of meaning? Not at all, though cartoonists have unconscious motivations like everyone else. He may have considered the possible racist interpretation and justified his decision because he didn't mean it that way.

Cartoonists make artistic and editorial judgments every day, though some cartoonists have better judgment than others. Even so, outrage is out of proportion to the offense, and demands for retributive justice are more dangerous than a lousy cartoon.

Everything I know about cartooning I learned during many long conversations with the late political cartoonist Doug Marlette, a giant of the industry and one of journalism's most eloquent explainers. At times like this, I wonder what he would say, though I think I know. I took notes.

If he were alive, I doubt that Marlette would find anything defensible in the cartoon in question. Although he was an equal opportunity offender, especially when it came to religion and politics, being offensive was never his objective. The goal was to be effective; offense was the occasional byproduct.

Delonas was offensive without being effective because he had nothing to say. Cops-kill-chimp/stimulus-bill-bad is not the stuff of revelation. It is literal, blunt and unclever.

If (big if) Marlette had considered the chimpanzee as a vehicle for some larger point, he never would have made it a pivot point for anything that could be associated with the nation's first African-American president. No one was more attuned to the workings of the unconscious mind, nor more profoundly moved by the civil rights struggles against the terrorist sons of his native South. Two cops shooting an animal historically employed to portray blacks as less than human -- in the context of a black president's seminal piece of legislation -- would have been not only morally repugnant, but just not funny.

Nonetheless, Marlette also would have defended the cartoonist's right to fail and to offend others in pursuit of an ideal. He would have reminded all those upset by this cartoon that the freedom to offend is the very same freedom that allows them to protest when they have their feelings are hurt.

Be careful, he might have said, lest we lose for winning.