Call to pull ads from Smithtown paper for Obama satire

An apology by a Smithtown newspaper regarding a photo essay mocking President Obama did not go far enough for some community leaders and now they want the weekly to pay.

Suffolk legislators Ricardo Montano (D-Brentwood) and DuWayne Gregory (D-Amityville) held a news conference at the Smithtown Messenger Monday to announce Gregory's resolution that would pull about $2,000 to $5,000 worth of legal notices from the paper, officials said.

The photo essay in the Republican-leaning weekly, showed presidents and their wives when they first took office and after they left. The "after" photo of President Obama and the first lady shows a scene from "Sanford and Son" in which Sanford, an African-American junk collector, is fending off punches from his sister-in-law.

Smithtown Messenger publisher Philip Sciarillo said it was not meant as a racial attack, but the Rev. Roderick Pearson, of the Islip chapter of the NAACP, said the stereotype depicts African-Americans as aggressive people.

Both legislators said they didn't intend to censor the paper, but that the county should not send funds to an institution that would print racially provocative photos.

The newspaper's apology said they "may not always agree with the President's policies, but we respect the office that he holds and the Constitution that we all abide by."

Sciarillo said Monday that pulling the ads is a Democratic political maneuver.

"Now the government is telling us what we could write and can't write," he said, "by taking away our Suffolk County legal ads."