by Drew Friedman
I've been trying to avoid this all week, aside from addressing it on Facebook, but it doesn't seem to be going away. The image of Obama as The Joker has been popping up on posters in Los Angeles and has managed to get a lot of media attention, including today's LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/08/obama-bush-and-the-joker-cultural-double-standard.html
Most of the articles and blogs have also mentioned that I did an image of George W. Bush as the joker last year for Vanity Fair Online. Some of the news outlets, (Fox News, etc), have asked me for my feelings about it all, why the left never made a peep about the Bush image being over the top, but are now complaining that the Obama image is "racist", and insensitive. I've basically dismissed it by quoting the standard, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", and "Great minds think alike", but I finally decided to bring it up here. My image was done the week the Batman movie came out, and I think works well using the analogy of the Joker, an agent of chaos, destruction and death, all the while laughing through it all, as Bush, seemingly laughing and unmoved through the destruction reaped by his war in Iraq. The Obama/Joker image just doesn't work as satire, humor or anything else. You can put the white face Joker makeup on any celebrity or politician and you'd have a provocative, negative image, but beyond that, what's the actual point? What does being a supposed Socialist have to do with The Joker?
The best thing that came out of all this is that I got a great quote for the back cover of my upcoming anthology from Rush Limbaugh, who called my illustration of Bush, "of low artistic quality".
Such an honor!
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Most of the articles and blogs have also mentioned that I did an image of George W. Bush as the joker last year for Vanity Fair Online. Some of the news outlets, (Fox News, etc), have asked me for my feelings about it all, why the left never made a peep about the Bush image being over the top, but are now complaining that the Obama image is "racist", and insensitive. I've basically dismissed it by quoting the standard, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", and "Great minds think alike", but I finally decided to bring it up here. My image was done the week the Batman movie came out, and I think works well using the analogy of the Joker, an agent of chaos, destruction and death, all the while laughing through it all, as Bush, seemingly laughing and unmoved through the destruction reaped by his war in Iraq. The Obama/Joker image just doesn't work as satire, humor or anything else. You can put the white face Joker makeup on any celebrity or politician and you'd have a provocative, negative image, but beyond that, what's the actual point? What does being a supposed Socialist have to do with The Joker?
The best thing that came out of all this is that I got a great quote for the back cover of my upcoming anthology from Rush Limbaugh, who called my illustration of Bush, "of low artistic quality".
Such an honor!
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