It’s been a while since we’ve had a nice racist cartoon depiction of Ye Olde Black Guy in the White House, hasn’t it?

Don’t you miss it a little? The in-your-face, oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-that-someone-seriously-drew-that-and-then-someone-seriously-decided-to-publish-it racist claptrap about our president?

It seems that the early years of Obama’s presidency were a racist cartoon free-for-all.

Remember when the media was saturated with crap like this: 

President Obama as a monkey.

Or President Obama as a slave.

Or this from Even The Liberal New Yorker.

Or my favorite: “President Obama with a bone through his nose,” which isn’t a cartoon, of course, but really captures the racist zeitgeist of the Obama presidency.

Those were good times, weren’t they. Don’t you miss those times?

Well, never fear, dear friends. The Boston Herald is bringing racism back, which is totally weird because I’m pretty sure the fact that we’ve had a Black president for, like, six years was supposed to mean that we’re post-racial now.

But I digress.

So unless you’ve been trapped under something heavy for the past couple of weeks, you’re likely aware that Omar Gonzalez—an Iraq vet armed with a knife—recently hopped the White House fence, busted through five rings of security, dashed 70 yards across the White House lawn, waltzed right through the unlocked—unlocked!?—front door of the White House, and made it all the way to the East Room before being apprehended by the Secret Service.

While the nation was all, “Seriously!? WTF?!” the Secret Service decided to be shady about the details of the incident, particularly regarding just how far into the White House Gonzalez got. The Secret Service was all, “Settle down, America. He barely got over the fence.” Meanwhile, Gonzalez was practically sleeping underneath the Obamas’ bed.

Needless to say, the Secret Service has been the fodder for jokes as of late.

Enter The Boston Herald, which thought it’d be a capital idea to publish an obnoxiously racist cartoon drawn by Jerry Holbert featuring the president brushing his teeth in the bathroom with a white dude in the bathtub asking the president whether he’s tried the new watermelon flavored toothpaste. The caption on the cartoon reads, “White House Invader Got Farther Than Originally Thought.”

Click here to behold the tomfoolery. (I recommend that you first wrap a decent amount of duct tape around your head so your brain doesn’t leak out of your ears.)

Holbert claims that he had no idea that the cartoon is racist. He also claims that he’s not racist, as people who do racist shit tend to do, because obviously whether or not one is racist is far more important than whether or not one did some seriously racist shit, which Jerry Holbert totally did.

Via CBS Boston:

I had no intention at all of offending anybody. I thought this was a very lighthearted cartoon, just suggesting that the guy got as far as the bathtub and he’s recommending a different toothpaste for the president.

Holbert says that he got the idea for watermelon toothpaste when he found a tube of Colgate watermelon toothpaste for kids in his house. He says he wasn’t thinking along racial lines at all.

Again, via CBS Boston:

I myself love watermelon and I thought that would be a great one. I was completely naive or innocent toward any racial suggestion, I wasn’t even thinking along those lines at all.

See here’s the thing. Holbert’s story is completely plausible. I mean, granted I find it hard to believe that anyone in this day and age is unaware of the lazy watermelon-eating Negro stereotype, but let’s assume this guy is really that clueless.

The question remains, who the hell is in charge over at the Boston Herald?

Because clearly there are some people who understood that the cartoon is racist: After all, the syndicate of the cartoon contacted Holbert and asked him if he could change “watermelon” to “raspberry”—and he did!

According to Holbert, the syndicate told him that there was a racial element to “watermelon toothpaste,” but Holbert disagreed.

He disagreed.

Look, if someone calls you up and says, “Hey, this watermelon cartoon is racist” you don’t disagree. You do some research.

Maybe hit up Google and type in “watermelon racist.” The first two entries (aside from entries about The Boston Herald cock-up) are “Watermelon stereotype” from Wikipedia, and an article published by the Huffington Post entitled “African-Americans and the Watermelon Stereotype” which notes the following:

The record of watermelon’s role in racism is well-chronicled. As Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute fashioned it, “since the earliest days of plantation slavery, the caricature of the dark-skinned black child, his too-red lips stretched to grotesque extremes as they opened to chomp down on watermelon, was a staple of racism’s diet. Over time, the watermelon became a symbol of the broader denigration of black people.

So no, Jerry—it doesn’t matter that you “disagreed” that your cartoon was racist, or that you were, as you claim, naive about the racial implications.

Use your dadgum Google machine and figure it out because the most basic of research would have revealed what almost every sentient American knows: Associating Black people and watermelon is racist as all get out.

Of course, the traditional non-apologies have already been made.

Editors @bostonherald: "We sincerely regret if we inadvertently offended anyone" with today's Holbert cartoon. #wbz pic.twitter.com/XWWOIHF9KQ

— Joe Mathieu (@JMathieuReports) October 1, 2014

Nope. Not good enough. Since your cartoonist doesn’t understand why “BLACK PEEPUL LUV WATERMELONZ LOL” isn’t racist, maybe remove the cartoon from your website—why is the cartoon still published on your website, Boston Herald?—and replace it with a sincere apology that acknowledges exactly why that shit is racist.

Something along the lines of: “We published some seriously racist shit. Apparently, we have been in a coma for most of our lives and didn’t understand the connotations of ‘NEGROES AND THEIR WATERMELON, MIRITE’ but when we googled it, we discovered that, wow, that’s really racist and, as such, we sincerely apologize for the offense. We take issues of racism seriously and even though we are located in one of the most racist cities in all of Americaland, we want to break the cycle of racist bullshit. We are sorry. It won’t happen again.”

That would have been a nice apology. 

“We regret if people were inadvertently offended” is not an apology. How the hell can someone be “inadvertently” offended anyway? I was advertently offended, dangit, as were most people who have brains in their skulls instead of flaming bags of poop.

And besides, Jerry—you claim that you’re not racist, but as Keith Boykin of CNBC pointed out on Twitter this morning, the fact that you have a history of depicting Blacky O in a racist manner belies your “But I’m totes not racist, y’all” protestations.

I mean this?

And it’s hard for me to take Holbert seriously when he’s done cartoons depicting Obama like a dumb slave. pic.twitter.com/HkZOcc5x4s — Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 1, 2014

Really, Jerry? Really?

Get it together, Jerry. Get it the fuck together.