No need to describe them as pictures are worth a thousand words ...
... posters depicting President Obama as the Joker character have been plastered on various freeway off-ramps and underpasses in the Hollywood area.And from KTLA-TV Los Angeles, "Obama 'Joker' Poster Causing a Stir in L.A.":
A poster showing President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger's "Joker" character from "The Dark Knight" is creating a stir on the streets of Los Angeles where the image began appearing over the weekend.I don't recall Hutchinson getting so uptight about two-terms of "BusHitler" attacks. And actually, the First Amendment's a bitch that way sometimes. See, "Obama 'Joker poster' is Free Speech at Work."
The Obama-Joker poster shows President Obama with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick and also has the word "socialism" printed in bold, dark letters under the image of his face.
It's unclear who created the image and who is posting it across the city. No one has taken credit so far.
Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous.
Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.
Also, check Allahpundit, "LA Weekly Wets Itself Over Obama/Joker Poster: 'The Only Thing Missing is a Noose'."
More at World Weekly News and Newsbusters (via Memeorandum).
Yes, there's obviously a double standard when it comes to free speech. I was in a film production workplace several times in the last 8 yrs. with Hitler-moustached GWB images posted conspicuously... and not a peep out of anyone.
ReplyDeleteThe Joker/ Obama viral image is a powerful one, the first compelling visceral evidence of trouble in paradise.
Thanks for visiting, Brenda!
ReplyDeleteI am just glad that somebody on the right finally has the stones to start sticking it to the left the same way they have been doing to us for years.
ReplyDeleteOur way of life, indeed our very country, is right now at stake, and this is not the time to play nice with those laboring tirelessly to destroy it.
If we are going to have any chance to win the fight against the freedom-hating swine now working feverishly to "transform" the America we were born in into something decidedly hideous, we are going to eventually have to get down in the mud and wrestle with them.
The ultimate cost of not doing so is just too high.
-Dave
Dave ... Bill Whittle read your mind ...
ReplyDeleteAlinski and his followers want you to believe that if you fight dirty in response to people fighting dirty with you, then you have lost your morals and in fact your identity. But that’s a lie.
We are in a political fight to the death with people who will stop at nothing – and I’m not talking about your average decent Democrat, but rather these Alinski radicals. And if we don’t face the same realization as those Marines on Guadalcanal and give back as brutally as we have taken, then we will lose.
Which is what they want. And if we do lose to these kind of tactics, there will be no more decent people left in politics.
Time to take it up a notch ... not as our adversaries do, with mere vulgarity and vitriol, but with humor and wit mixed with a LOT of friendly-but-FIRM resolve -- and a little righteous anger where needed -- to see sound principle re-instituted in our institutions of governance.
These posters are simply genius. To make it all the more funny they appeared in LA first. Perhaps America is waking up to the world and realizing that things are not as they once were. Keep up the good work and don't let all that fuss over the video coverage mess with your head.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone!
ReplyDelete"Time to take it up a notch ... not as our adversaries do, with mere vulgarity and vitriol..."
ReplyDelete"...freedom-hating swine..."
"If he is the Antichrist, it is important we know where he was born."
Well done. And can someone explain to me what the Joker has to do with Socialism?
JBW ... actually, while many see this as inspired by the Heath Ledger character in The Dark Knight, I see the Jack Nicholson version of the Joker as a closer parallel.
ReplyDeleteNear the climax of Tim Burton's Batman, IIRC, we see the Joker and his henchmen parading down the streets of Gotham, throwing cash to the crowd -- just before the trap is to be sprung, as the parade balloons start to be overfilled to the point of rupture with the lethal Smylex gas, which leaves one dead with a smile.
At any rate, these posters are a more nuanced commentary than anything you seem to post here.
Isn't it great when these write themselves? You don't have to tax your brain one little bit. It's a first amendment issue! The Left published even more violent depictions of Bush!
ReplyDeleteYawn, yawn, that was fun. No one can accuse you of hypocrisy, and you were firmly behind raising the quality of discourse when you told all the leftwing whackos that the President's vision for democracy was bettwr than theirs.
Yep, they just write themselves. It's all about power as your blog title suggests, and the right people having it, as your profile suggests.
Good thing we've go college professors weighing in on these tough issues.
Rich, Nicholson's Joker was literally passing out free money in the streets in order to get the people of Gotham to trust him before he committed cold-blooded, mass murder. I'm curious: Which of Obama's policy positions or domestic programs are comparable to this, making it a "subtle commentary"?
ReplyDeleteRegardless of your answer, the smeared face paint and rippling scars around his mouth make it quite obvious to any Batman aficionado that Obama is being portrayed here as Ledger's Joker. If the artist had Photoshopped him with a cosmetic Cheshire Cat grin and an incredibly gay zoot suit ensemble I'd be more apt to concede your point. While you're at it, why not just say that he's commenting on Cesar Romero's dancing the Batusi as an allegory for Obama supposedly dancing around the facts of whatever...
Despite any alternate meaning you try to impart to the piece, the artist has labeled Obama a Socialist while simultaneously portraying him as an anarchist. That's not subtle commentary, it's cognitive dissonance wrapped in linguistic ignorance. It's two generic, knee-jerk insults that some intellectual simpleton with Photoshop slapped together in an effort to somehow slam Obama. I'll admit that as a work of art it's technically proficient but I'll let you read into any possible nuanced exposition as much as you see fit, my own subtle commentary aside.
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ReplyDeleteIsn't art beautiful, that we can read in many meanings ... not just those of high-minded, self-appointed art critics like JBW?
ReplyDeleteLike the promise of "free" health care being handed to us ... even as the end result will be the serial "murders" of the doctor-patient relationship and the associated freedom to direct our own health care ... and our civil liberties, as our government gains access to highly-personal information to a degree far beyond anyone's worst nightmares of wiretaps and the PATRIOT Act.
Like the handing out of stimulus checks and other wealth-redistribution devices, flavored with a big scoop of class envy that leads us to think we are merely "getting what we deserve" ... when in fact what we are also getting is the "murder" of the free-enterprise system and the economic freedom of the most productive among us ... murders that will lead to our own economic starvation, once today's freebies are spent and the economic well runs dry.
All the result of the highly-erudite but still "mere words" of someone whose ideas are looking more and more like a joke.
A bad joke.
Like Bill Whittle said, it's time for us to play by our adversaries' rules ... at least to some degree. If they don't like it, they know how to stop it ... drop the idea that they are our "betters", acknowledge their own limitations, and show some respect for those who dissent from their "sophistication".
Until then ... game on.
Hey, I'd like one for my very own. I do hope this group are ardent capitalists and sell their merchandise for a profit. That would be a fitting rebuke of this "Collectivist Clown" that the country was duped into electing.
ReplyDeleteAs a patriotic Republican, I would never want to associate myself with such mindless slights on the President of the United States – he is not the enemy of the people! He is just a Democrat with a different view from ours. I disagree with virtually all of Obama’s policies and, unfortunately future history will bear this out, as our country suffers in economic disaster and attacks by NK and Iran all due to the myopic policies of this administration. However, Barak Obama is not a joker or a demon and does not deserve to be cast as one.
ReplyDeleteThe image of the first black American president altered in this way? Are you all proud of yourselves – finally we reduce ourselves to the leftist tactics? Should they have, during the depression, watching FDR turn the nation into socialism, depict the president with is crutches? As a former Provost of a Design College, I know that the “medium is the message,” but this is just a sinister and childish form of protest. Get back to the issues and stop buyng into the histrionics.
Rusty, this is the part where Dave, Stogie, Don and others will tell you that because "leftists" like me are always so incredibly dishonest and vile that it's OK to do or say whatever it takes to win, whether that be questioning Obama's religion and/or citizenship, holding up pictures of him with devil's horns at tea bagging rallies or shouting down politicians at town hall meetings.
ReplyDeleteOf course, don't listen to me because I'm just an Obamaton who can't think for myself because I've had the wool pulled so thoroughly over my eyes and I want to destroy this country and the American way of life to boot. Did I cover it all, fellas? Oh yeah, and I'm a radical nihilist. How could I have forgotten?
From Bill Whittle's post that I linked earlier:
ReplyDeleteOne of the Rules for Radicals is
Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules.
Think about the genius of that. Just let that sink in. When a Republican has an ethics scandal, it’s “hypocrisy” and “double standards” and all the rest. But when a Clinton or a Pelosi or a Charley Rangel or a Chris Dodd or a Barney Frank or a William Jefferson has an ethics scandal, no one bats an eye. Why? Because of course they’re immoral! They’re Democrats.
JBW, thanks for showing us how to execute that play in the Alinsky playbook.
Leaders forfeit the expectation of civility and respect in public discourse on our part, when they are intellectually dishonest ... or when they leverage our civility to set the agenda for that discourse to favor their preconceptions at our expense.
When the answers provided by our leaders are based on falsehoods like the "47 million uninsured" that includes illegals and millions with means who CHOOSE not to purchase insurance, civil discourse is counterproductive to the public interest ... it mererly enables the intellectually dishonest to frame the debate, giving their lies (and yes, unlike Mr. Bush re: Iraq, these ARE lies) the unmerited respect of civil repetition.
When the relativists that dominate our government at present forsake their relativism and replace it with intellectual honesty, there won't be a need for posters like these.
Rusty, it seems to me you're reading in racism where none exists. And, to not "sink to their level" in this way is to cede a part of the pop-culture battlefield of ideas to our adversaries.
They know how to stop this ... be SINCERELY civil themselves, instead of acting like our "betters".
Rich, I and liberals like myself would have no problem acknowledging that your ethics scandals and the attendant hypocrisy applied equally across the political spectrum except that we are inundated every day by Republicans repeatedly claiming that only they can lay claim to morality and are the party of family values. At least the Dems acknowledge their faults (to some extent) before they cheat on their spouses or do whatever else powerful politicians try to get away with.
ReplyDeleteYou sound as close-minded and tone-deaf as every liberal I hear saying the exact same things about you that you're saying about them, and they do. It cracks me up to read this back and forth of "We never do anything wrong but you guys always do!" coming from both sides of the aisle.
"Obama lies all the time about the number of uninsured and Bush never lied about any aspect of the invasion of Iraq, so I can now say any vicious thing about Obama cause he's a liar. Oh, and the left also lie all the time and the right never does so we're better than them and thus anything now goes cause we have to win this 'war' at all costs". Did I miss anything?
And if I've crossed some line of civility discussing this with you here today I'm sure you'll also let me know. I'd hate for my "vulgarity and vitriol" to ruin my already apparently horrible reputation.
JBW, the reason that conservatives can lay a near-exclusive claim to family values, is rooted in the primary divide between Left and Right.
ReplyDeleteThe Right holds some principles to be immutable and absolute ... and when one who professes to hold those values violates them, they are subject to our disdain for doing so ... and our forgiveness when they return to an adherence to sound principle.
The Left, unlike the Right, has embraced relativism ... and therefore when one violates principle at the personal level, it's no big deal to y'all ... even when such "tolerance" allows the violations to corrode the foundations of human interaction our civilzation is built upon.
As a result, the good times keep rolling for y'all ... and in the absence of the corrective feedback provided by respect for sound principle, the corrosion continues.
Y'all don't "acknowledge" the fault ... y'all effectively IGNORE it ... unless it is considered a Sin Against the Collective, such as attaining wealth but not surrendering it to the Collective.
Then, y'all are as self-righteous as the worst stereotype you have of an evangelical preacher.