Amid Firestorm Of Criticism, Blog Removes Offensive Photo Of First Lady Michelle Obama

November 26, 2009 8:32 a.m. EST

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A close-up photo of First Lady Michelle Obama edited to make her appear like a monkey has been removed by the owner of the blog where it was posted. The photo was the top image search result in Google, which had come under criticism for not taking down the photo.

The photo appeared last week in a different Website and was taken down by Google because it was sending malware. It re-surfaced this week in a blog called Hot Girls, amid intense debate on whether the photo constitutes free speech or is offensive and racist enough to be removed.

Late Wednesday, the photo was no longer Hot Girls and an apology appears on blog instead.

The post with a wrong date of Oct. 21, and a title of "Michelle Obama," has a line in Chinese characters, and then a short statement in crooked English. The statement says, "I am very sorry for this article, and that this is the program automatically issued a document from the article. Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful."

The other non-edited photos of Obama, the first African-American first lady, still appear below it. But the 1,228 comments at the bottom, some in Turkish, Spanish and French, indicate that many found the edited photo offensive and racist.

Google had refused to remove the image despite requests on is help forum that it do so. Some of the people who made comments on the forum had argued for free speech, saying censorship by Google would not be different from the Great Firewall in China. The company had put out an advertisement called "Offensive Search Results"

above the edited photo. The ad still appears on image search results for the First Lady, although the photo no longer does.

"The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results," Google says in the ad. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority."

"Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it," the company adds. "We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page."

"We apologize if you've had an upsetting experience using Google," it also says. "We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results."

The photo comes several months after a comment by a Republican on Facebook likening the First Lady to a gorilla.

Reacting to news about a gorilla escaping from Riverbanks Zoo, GOP activist and former a South Carolina Senate candidate Rusty DePass in June wrote on Facebook, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless." DePass apologized and his Facebook account was deleted.

A similar controversy erupted in February, when the New York Post ran a cartoon showing two white police officers shooting a gorilla while saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

At the time, police in Connecticut shot to death a gorilla that attacked a friend of its owner. But there was also intense debate in Congress about President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package.

More recently, a Massachusetts golf course was vandalized last month with a billboard-sized message carved into the green putting the President's name beside a swastika to resemble the popular phrase, "I Heart Obama."