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Barack Obama Joker poster lifts conservatives
A mysterious poster of Barack Obama as the Batman villain has lifted the spirits of right-wing Americans and incensed Democrats
A poster likening President Barack Obama to Batman's nemesis the Joker has put a spring in the step of right-wing Americans.
The poster, which depicts Obama as the most recent incarnation of the supervillain, played by the late Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, includes the slogan 'Socialist' and first appeared plastered over concrete underpasses in Los Angeles at the weekend.
Now it has gone viral, becoming an internet sensation, as conservative Americans sense a turning of the tide of public opinion against a president who promised so much, but is now struggling to get his much-hyped healthcare reforms through Congress.
Thomas Lifson, a right-wing commentator, wrote on his American Thinker blog: "It is starting. Open mockery of Barack Obama, as disillusionment sets in with the man, his policies, and the phony image of a race-healing, brilliant, scholarly, middle-of-the-roader."
Obama's approval rating currently stands at 56 per cent - around the same as President George W Bush in the August following his inauguration in 2001 - but it has fallen from a high of 69 per cent in January, when the more popular depiction of Obama was the heroic 'Hope' poster pictured above.
Rather than questioning the sense of calling Obama - or indeed the mayhem-wreaking, anarchist Joker - a socialist, the main criticism of the poster from Democrats has so far been to question it on grounds of taste.
Political analyst and social commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson called on the poster's author to identify themselves and explain his or her motives: "Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery: it is mean-spirited and dangerous."
But this isn't the first time an American president has been likened to Heath Ledger's Joker. Only last year, a Vanity Fair article was illustrated with a rather more artistic imagining of then-president George W Bush as the tortured villain - although it was more normal to depict the gaffe-prone premier as a monkey during his eight years in power. ·
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why do people get their panties in a bunch laugh and forget it
One could imagine the KKK sharpening their knives and getting their guns ready for action! Were America not a country with such a sizeable number of intellectually challenged people one would say ignoring such nonsense was the best way to go. But disturbing reports of 30's Germany Brown Shirts behaviour at town hall meetings up and down the country to discuss health care reforms show a more sinister agenda at work. Democracy, about which Americans boast so loudly and which they want to export to less enlightened communities around the world, seems to be totally misunderstood by a significant number of them.
My apologies Simon. Yes, Tony Bliar, I ought to have been clear. And yes socialism. Socialism is one of the key tools the capitalists, the Insider capitalists at the top, use to control things. No, I didn't realise this until I read 'None dare call it conspiracy', 1971, by Gary Allen which succinctly explains how it works. It's out of print - but it's available 2nd hand and probably as a pdf on the web. Well recommended.
Blair brought socialism to the UK? Who? Tony Blair? Tony moved Labour way to the right and whole-heartedly embraced Thatcherism. He was no more socialist than any the Tories across the floor. As for Obama - yes, fancy not pulling your country out of a massive global recession in just 6 months. It's not like the previous bunch left you with a massive deficit - oh, wait a minute...
Tim's hit upon an interesting point. James Delingpole in Welcome to Obamaland warned that Obama would bring socialism to the USA - as Bliar did to the UK - with dire consequences. The poster latches on to that point as well as picks up on the Drew Friedman joker depiction of GW in Vanity Fair. I think the subliminal message here is this: The joke is no joke, whichever puppet is the president the controlling interests are still running the circus. It's affecting us all.
One poster is the only thing thing the Right has to smile about.
Yeah its funny, but it does nothing to counter balance the millions of other positive poster/graffiti art Obama has inspired- globally.
GO OBAMA GO
Painting the face white reminds the bigots - as if they needed reminding! - that their alleged 'president' is a black man, and therefore by definition an impostor, not even born in the USA, simply pretending to be president (which is of course a position reserved to whites). The image also rather crudely recalls the black and white minstrel shows beloved of the racist South, thus seeking to put him in his 'proper' place.