Until today, a Google Image search for "Michelle Obama" yielded, as the top result, a manipulated photo of the First Lady in which she resembles a monkey. Despite a slew of complaints that the image is overtly racist, Google declined to remove it, citing free speech concerns, but did add a warning above the photo. Though the blog “Hot Girls,” which hosted the offensive shot, eventually removed it from its site, the question is: Should Google do more to police offensive subject material? (Watch a report about Google apologizing for an offensive photo of Michelle Obama.)
Google did the right thing in leaving it up: "It's hard not to agree with Google on this," says Adrian Chen at Gawker. It's the classic slippery slope fear: "Removing every image someone finds offensive" will just leave the Internet with "pictures of babies dressed up as flowers." Nevertheless, the Obama-monkey image is clearly in poor taste, and we understand why people "really wish that picture was gone."
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