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.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. 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…””We have issued a public challenge to the person or group that put up the poster to come forth and publicly tell why they have used this offensive depiction to ridicule President Obama.”
Golly, the head of the “roundtable” is upset. Hey. It’s a comic book character for chrissakes. Watch how this mimics the outrage over the Mohammad cartoons from Denmark. I wonder why nobody stood up over the Bush posters depicting him as the anti-Christ. After all, the four horsemen never showed up.
Found by Keith Ray.
Buzzy, what are you suggesting? That this artist be tracked down and prosecuted? Do you really want to go down that road? Really? The wheel will turn and some day a conservative President will be back in office. Do you really want to have a precedent for tracking and prosecuting (or setting the media dogs on) people who dissent? Not even Nixon did that.
You have the right to face your accuser in a trial. You can anonymously make an offensive poster. As your side did for 8 years…
The picture is tacky & tasteless, no matter how one feels. “Don’t look over here!” is EXACTLY the message behind this story. What about the 250K American forces in Afghanistan, or the continued military support Israel receives from the US taxpayer?
You can paint Obama as whatever you want, the facts of the matter will not change.
#116–faxon==well done.
My thinking was YOU said that IQ tests to establish voting qualifications was racist==ie, the poll testing in the South designed to prevent Blacks from registering.
So, I took IQ testing as identifying the Blacks who voted overwhelmingly for Obama. With the Blacks, Obama would not be President. Without Obama as President, the Obama as the Joker Poster would not exist either.
What did I miss?
#131–Hugh==seriously==what comment does the poster make regarding race?
#131 Bobbo
Kind of depends on how you look at it. You can read it as Obama selling out to the white dominated establishment (just another white joker in government). I suppose you could read racism into it by interpreting it as suggesting Obama is pretending to be white.
Conversely you could read it as having nothing to do with race, as the ‘real’ joker wore greasepaint and it accentuates the grisly red smile.
I chose the first interpretation as being more likely but the third one fits just as well. In any case I don’t see it as racist.
I wonder how many Republicans don’t know that Medicaid, Medicare, and TriCare are all government run health care.
#131–Hugh==”You can read it as Obama selling out to the white dominated establishment (just another white joker in government).” /// I see nothing racial in that. Nothing.
Further, the image of the Joker as Keith Ledger is NOT an image about “selling out.” It is an image about being a twisted/perverted/anti-social personality.
In fact, and this is why I seek out reasoned disagreement, it comes to me that by the very fact of using the Joker as the representative image, there is no racial element at all.
Thank you for confirming my initial impression.
By your way of explanation, the sun setting at night (black) and rising in the morning (white) is all a racial theme? ==== No, not enough context to support such a forced notion.
Doubtful the GOP nor Health Insurance lobby will release the name of their proxy.
How affordable was heath care before GOVERNMENT was involved?
#135 Bobbo
There is no single interpretation of art. I tend to agree with you that there is nothing racial about it (upon reflection), but that doesn’t mean that others don’t see something racial, or that the artist didn’t intend it to be a racial statement.
Your day and night analogy is a bit glib don’t you think?
#138–Hugh==hah, hah. Glib? Meaning you recognize my opinion was FOS? Yes. But you admit learning from it.
Progress. Still “extremely” interesting you refuse to give up on what you see is worse than a glib position.
Just imagine if you had any vested interest other than your own wisdom?
Why Obamacare Can’t Work: The Calculation Argument
http://mises.org/story/3543
Wow!
Good thing they didn’t go with Obama as Buckwheat.
I think it’s kind of funny. In a weird way, I want one for my wall!
Now that one of GWB as the Joker in comment #6, now THAT’s scary-looking!
Obama should be treated with EXACTLY the same amount of respect that Bush was. They’re both Presidents. No difference.
alfred1 only posted once in this thread? his fingers must be too sore,fapping madly to this image. also I agree with the earlier comment “this site needs a rating system”.
#140 – your article is predicated on faulty logic as well.
“Instead, health costs reflect the distortions that government regulators have introduced through reimbursement mechanisms created by command-and-control bureaucracies at federal and state levels.
“Simply put, Medicare, Medicaid, workers compensation, HMOs and even private health-insurance firms that follow Medicare rates, rely on cost reports submitted by providers. This cost data is then pushed through mathematical models and additional data generated by government, such as inflation and regional-labor-cost modifiers, to unilaterally (or in agreement with lobbyists and industry groups) determine what the prices for services should be.”
That’s patently untrue. Well, I should clarify – the bit about “government regulators have introduced through reimbursement mechanisms created by command-and-control bureaucracies at federal and state levels” is patently untrue. Healthcare costs are high because American healthcare is an oligarchy (and, yes, Medicaid *isn’t helping*). It has nothing to do with “government regulators”, but lack of private regulators – call them whatever you will, free market competitors, government caps, whatever.
Where there exists collusion there can be no competition. Something big enough has to exist in order to compete with currently existing *private* businesses – namely, HMOs (which your article seems to confuse with government regulation? Does this idiot even *know* what an HMO *is*?) and PPOs, which effectively control not just *which* doctors you can see but *how much* those doctors charge (and, consequently, how much those doctors pay to the insurance companies, which are directly linked to – ta da! – the HMOs).
The problem with the system is endemic. It is true, the government in the past hasn’t helped. But the fault lies with the private firms on this.
They made his face white because the Joker wore white greasepaint on his face. I don’t think it had anything to do with race.
And pedro, thanks for giving us a good example of the wingnut mindset. đ
And speaking of deranged… telegraph.co.uk has a story about Obama… over 30 death threats per day:
Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President’s Secret Service.
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5967942/Barack-Obama-faces-30-death-threats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html
Boy, those wingnuts really do not like having a Democratic president. And the fact that he’s black probably doesn’t help either.
You were saying, pedro? Who’s deranged?
#113, Phydeau,
The difference between wingnuts and liberals is not just in their political beliefs, but their mindsets
Exactly !!! That and the rest of your post sums it all up.
hahaha … after years of mean-spirited, vituperative bashing of anyone ‘not liberal’, the lefties are suddenly getting indignantly sensitive about such matters. ridiculous
Hard to believe someone could be that stupid….but brm comes close as well.
The picture in and of itself is nothing. The right to view and create such artwork is priceless.
The picture in and of itself: $10.
The right to view and create such artwork: $1,000,000
The intelligence to tell sh*t from shinola: priceless.
#138, Hugh, (and bobbo, the inquisitive,)
. . . there is nothing racial about it (upon reflection), but that doesnât mean that others donât see something racial, or that the artist didnât intend it to be a racial statement.
Good point.
So if a black man is parodied as the Joker with a noose around his neck, that would be racist. Yet, if there was no noose then it wouldn’t be racist. That quick delineation kinds of misses that social mores are shades of gray.
Many people will not see racism in it, BUT as Hugh points out, that doesn’t mean everyone won’t. Since (I assume) the vast majority of posters here are white males, it also stands that they don’t see the world as through a black’s or latino’s eyes. Maybe if you had of “walked the walk” you could understand.
To paraphrase as someone above pointed out, ‘My wife can call herself and her female friends a bitch. But damn, if I do all hell will break loose’. To assume that this poster is not racist is to also assume that the group concerned thinks and acts EXACTLY as you do. It may not be racist in our eyes, or more accurately, we don’t see the racism in others eyes.
I don’t think Fusion is a racist. More of an apologist. A nice white guy filled with white guilt. Wrong, but not the worst thing to be.
I didn’t grow up in America. Got discriminated AGAINST for being white when living in Japan.
I grew up feeling the pain of racism, but being white in America, somehow survived.
Racism is everywhere. People see “differences” that are real then attach all sorts of things to that difference that are not real.
Every morning, we begin the day choosing to be who we are. Every day, a new opportunity.
http://newscientist.com/article/mg20327201.400-10-mysteries-of-you-superstition.html
#159, bobbo the thoughtful,
How many people must hold an opinion before it should be given legitimacy?
It depends. A thoughtful opinion is valid. One billion opinions based upon bigotry, greed, or any other non thinking tact is probably illegitimate.
If, like my kid, you hate broccoli just because you don’t like the name is not a valid opinion. But, that is my opinion.
Should the people holding an incorrect opinion be educated, or should their wrong opinion be legitimized?
How can an opinion be incorrect or wrong? They might disagree, but an opinion is just what a person believes. Often my wife asks me why I don’t like something. âBecause I don’t like to wear purple underwearâ is an opinion and can not be wrong. But you know wives, . . .
đ
What does âThe Jokerâ as an image represent? The ONLY correct answer is a sick/twisted/personality. It does not make any statement at all regarding race or racism.
I agree. I agree as far as you and I see him that way. BUT, through the culture of a black man, ‘Uncle Tom’ is not always a good moniker. Nor is the âblack faceâ white comedians used to stereotype blacks. You and I don’t see why this might offend someone. That doesn’t mean it can’t or doesn’t.
Did Gregory Peck hate himself because he was white?
I’m going to say bad analogy. In the early 19th century, ALL white men, especially White Anglo Saxon Protestants were superior to all other races. That includes blacks, Native Americans, and Polynesians.
I remember my grand mother talking about my (then) deceased grandfather’s military service with the Royal Navy in India between the Boer War and WWI. She referred to the natives as âniggarsâ. She didn’t say it with spite or malice; more as the words spoken by someone brought up to believe they were an inferior race. That was also probably the way the Royal Navy referred to the natives and my grandfather talked to her about them. A similar mind-set was found in the American Navy stationed in the Philippines.
#160, ‘dro,
conFusionâs a racist.
There, there. Do you feel better now? Now that you managed to yell an degenerating insult. I hope you realize how intelligent your post is. The insight, the wit, the thought provoking analysis.
This is what classifies you as a right wing nut. If you ever decide to look up what that is, try it as a branch of idiot on the moran side.
#165 pedro
I didn’t say its racist. I said it raises the issue of race and clearly, as evidenced by this thread, it does.
I don’t think that the artist intends this to be a racial statement, but that’s just my opinion. Maybe she or he did. Who knows? Ask the artist.