Humans are not apes

Anthropologist John Hawks writes:

I don't know why so many people who accept and promote evolution have such a dim view of phylogenetic systematics.

How else to explain why I so often hear the canard, "Humans are apes"?

My children can tell what an ape is. I work very hard to tell them why apes are different than monkeys. When they see a chimpanzee in a zoo, and other parents are telling their kids, "Look at the monkey!", my children say, "That's not a monkey, it's an ape!" ...

Today I read Jerry Coyne, writing about a silly column ("Washington Times denies that Richard Dawkins is an ape"): ...

Jerry is far from alone in this -- many evolutionary biologists state as if it were an unquestionable fact that humans are apes. I disagree. ...

We aren't apes. And it's OK to teach your children that chimpanzees are apes, not monkeys. Because that's what I do.

If a child can understand the difference between humans and apes, why are evolutionists so eager to deny it? They are on some ideological mission to convince everyone that we are just animals.