Smithtown Weekly Shows Obamas as ‘Sanford and Son’

By Frank Eltman, AP
A weekly newspaper photo depicting President Barack Obama and his wife as characters from the TV sitcom “Sanford and Son” was intended as political satire and not a racist commentary, the publisher said Wednesday.

Phillip Sciarello, publisher and part owner of the Smithtown Messenger on Long Island, defended the decision to publish the photo, but added the newspaper would run a retraction in its next edition for anyone who might have been offended.

The photo spread features “before and after” shots of the last six presidents and their wives, starting with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and ending with the Obamas. The “after” photo of the Obamas is a shot from the 1970s show, with Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford and LaWanda Page as Sanford’s sister-in-law, Aunt Esther. She is seen standing ready to box Sanford; the characters often verbally jousted as part of the show’s story line.

The “after” photos of the other presidents feature their images as slightly older than when they took office.

The controversy prompted the Brookhaven town board to remove one of the Messenger’s sister publications, the Brookhaven Review, as an official newspaper, meaning it will no longer publish town government legal notices.

“The reference to racial stereotypes is where the line was crossed,” Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko told Newsday in Wednesday’s editions. Lesko, a Democrat, did not immediately return a call for comment.


President Barack Obama gestures while addressing the Business Council in Washington, Tuesday, May 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
A Suffolk County legislator, DuWayne Gregory of Amityville, said he will propose a resolution to drop the Messenger as an official county paper at next week’s meeting of the Legislature.

Hazel N. Dukes, president of the state NAACP conference, said in a statement Wednesday that the county should immediately pull advertising from any publication that ran the photo.

“It is simply shocking and outrageous that such a blatantly racist ad would run in any paper, much less an official paper of Suffolk County,” Dukes said. “New Yorkers of all races and ethnicity are disgusted by it and reject it.”

Tracey Edwards, the NAACP’s Long Island regional director, described the portrayal of the Obamas as “despicable and disrespectful. If this was intended as satire, it misses the mark.”