John Legend Issues Open Letter, Calls for NY Post Protest

Joining the likes of Spike Lee and Rev. Al Sharpton, John Legend is the latest to express outrage regarding the New York Post's controversial cartoon published earlier this week.

The depiction of two cops shooting a chimpanzee has sparked protests and the call for cartoonist Sean Delonas to be fired. Legend took to his blog yesterday, expressing his concern and calling for a different sort of boycott by his fellow entertainers: stop granting the paper interviews.

"I'm personally boycotting your paper and won't do any interviews with any of your reporters, and I encourage all of my colleagues in the entertainment business to do so as well," Legend writes.

Amongst many rhetorical questions, Legend argues that the meaning or the implicit meaning of the cartoon should have been noted before going to print. "It was stupid and willfully ignorant of you not to connect these easily connect-able dots," he continues. "If it is what you intended, then you obviously wanted to be grossly provocative, racist and offensive to the sensibilities of most reasonable Americans. Either way, you should not have printed this cartoon, and the fact that you did is truly reprehensible."

Like Lee and Sharpton, Legend has rebutted The New York Post's apology too, calling it "lame."

The R&B singer is currently on a mini break from touring, which will resume overseas on February 26 at the Dubai International Jazz Festival in the United Arab Emirates.