Why So Serious?
Steven Mikulan of the LA Weekly is offended by a poster appearing around town that shows Obama as the Joker (Heath Ledger style) with the word "socialism" beneath. He adds "the only thing missing is a noose."
For as long as I've lived in LA I've seen street posters with grotesque caricatures of right-wingers (including African-Americans), comparing them to any evil the artists could imagine. Nazi imagery was a commonplace. The LA Weekly itself engaged in this kind of political comment--they even had Bush as a blood-dripping vampire on their cover. (There was also a local home where they hanged a Sarah Palin--no noose missing there. Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall anyone at the LA Weekly unhappy about this.)
Meanwhile, in 2008 you couldn't turn around without seeing a pro-Obama poster.
I'm astonished that Mikulan can't smell how rank his hypocrisy is. Then again, if he could, he wouldn't write such nonsense.
Even worse, pulling out the race card? Beneath contempt.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:26 AM
24 Comments:
Vanity Fair did George Bush as the Joker. Does this mean the Obama poster is less offensive, or less original?
Recognizing that putting a black man in whiteface is meaningfully different than putting a white man in whiteface doesn't have to mean you're playing the race card. Taking the position (explicitly or implicitly) that the rules for how you treat a black politician have to be slightly different than how you treat white politicians because of the history of racial discrimination in this country is arguable at best, but it's pretty far from rank hypocrisy. Rank hypocrisy would be reacting to a poster of Joe Biden this way.
I think it's a stupid poster on the merits because The Joker was about as anti-socialist a character as you could portray. But most of these "guerrilla" political posters are similarly incoherent.
You've got to be kidding me, QueensGuy. Joker wore whiteface. It's only the racially obsessed Left that can look at this poster and say it's about race. Even if someone thought there's something going on about race here, that guy at the Weekly didn't say you have to watch it, he said all that's missing is a noose. WTF?!
You can compare Bush to Dracula, Hitler, a chimp, show him slitting the throat of Lady Liberty, whatever you want, but even the slightest hint of criticism of Obama means you're out of line. This is beyond stupid. I can see why the Left likes it, though. The "Rules" mean we can say whatever the fuck we want, you can't do anything.
Not kidding at all, anon. Whiteface on a black man has a very specific historical connotation, no matter the context. Asking white people to avoid parodying a black man in the very few, very specific ways that have that historical connotation is not unreasonable. If that means its ok to portray Bush as a chimp but not Obama, and nooses are suddenly off limits, well, I'd call it a small price to pay in reparations (so to speak). Use some freaking creativity -- there's a whole world of insults out there that have no connection to past discrimination.
Hmm, in giving it some thought, I bet I could name the specific categories that are best avoided unless you want to look like you might be a racist:
1. lynching/nooses
2. lower primates
3. slavery
4. whiteface/blackface/Step'N'Fetch/Uncle Tom's Cabin
5. anti-miscegenation/rape
That might be it. Anyone think of any other bright-line-rule candidates?
6. Anything deemed demeaning to Obama.
I've got to tell you, this culture of white male conservative victimhood is getting mighty old mighty fast.
One cannot demand equality while simultaneously demanding to be treated unequally.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Demand everyone be treated equally (or actually only that Obama receive 1/100 the attacks that Bush regularly got) and Queens Guy complains that white males are claiming victimhood.
Luckily, noone in America has a right not to be offended (yet), so whatever QueensGuy or our various Anons think, people on the left and right will continue to push the limit as far as possible, and be as offensive as they can imagine.
We hadthis argument decades ago - buring a US Flag is deeply, deeply offensive to many Americans, especially veterans. But the speech is protected, and will continue. And with the internet, people will have an outlet for their offensive speech as broad as the members of the public who care to view/hear/reqad it.
P.S. I'm not easily offended.
I'm not offended by the posters that attack politicians. I'm offended by the ones that say how great they are.
The point is not what is offensive but what will a majority or, more importantly, the swing group in the middle deem to be offensive. While offensive in some dictionary definition, Bush as a Nazi doesn't come off as offensive based upon (current) underlying beliefs- Hanging Sarah palin might have been deemed more offensive had you had more talking/screaming heads saying it was offensive a la the Letterman jokes
I haven't seen this poster but I don't know. I have the feeling that Obama as joker wouldn't pass the sniff test as offensive but that Obama in a more overt whiteface that QG seems to be talking about would
Speaking of Letterman:
1. He was dead wrong in apologizing to Sarah Palin, and I lost a lot of respect for the guy as a result - not because of anything politically motivated, but because that was his job. He's a comedian, and any moron could see the joke (even with the mistake) he was trying to make. That a person in political power could use the media - the all-too complicit media - to drag a mea culpa from the guy didn't exactly sing "Let Freedom Ring".
2. A much more disturbing long-term trend, however, seems to be Letterman's hands-off approach to the current president (similar, from what I can glean, to other late-night talkshow hosts). Look, I like Obama better than Bush, too, but when comedians feel they can no longer joke about the highest office in the land, i.e., the defacto highest comedic target in the land, something very near to free speech seems to be in danger.
If you want to see the poster click on the link.
For what it's worth, I'm not the least bit offended by the poster. I'm just reacting to LAGuy's outrage at the criticism. I think people should be able to make whatever posters they want, even arguably (or overtly) racist ones. I'm just a bit tired of white men now routinely reacting with outrage at claims of racism, rather than giving the benefit of the doubt and trying to come up with real, non-partisan reasons why someone might find something racially offensive. I'm reminded of the South Park episode where guys who used the word nigger banded together as an oppressed group.
Not good enough, QueensGuy. Mikulan sat by quietly, or worse, was a cheerleader, when Republicans were attacked in the most vicious manner (including racist ways, not that it matters, as this has nothing to do with the issue at hand). But claiming Obama can't be attacked in a more mild way (or really ever be attacked) because he's part black is just a cheap attempt to avoid any criticism, and shows Mikulan's absurdly blinkered world.
I'm amazed you think you can turn this into white guys being too sensitive when it's about liberals being too sensitive.
I'll grant that liberals are often too sensitive, and I haven't a bloody clue what Mikulan has done or said in the past. My only points are: (1) things evoking historically-racist images are a special case for some people's sensitivities; and (2) white male outrage when people point out that it's a special case for them ("race card!") is both ungenerous and unhelpful.
Please recount for me the racist history of black people in clown makeup.
You can always find a racial component in any attack on Obama if you insist. People who want to protect Obama are always ready to play the race card--we've seen them before preemptively claiming racism before there was an attack. I don't see the need to cater to their sensitivity. In the long run, they're hurting black people, not me.
Did you see the hundreds of comments Mikulan got? They were 99% negative. There's no way all those comments were only from "white males." Some of them explicitly identified themselves as non-white or non-male. Now is it only white males who aren't allowed to complain about the race card, or is it wrong when others complain about it too?
Please recount for me the racist history of black people in clown makeup.
There is none. White people in blackface is racist, but black people portrayed in whiteface is nothing more than clown makeup. Anyone claiming otherwise is using the race card to deflect political criticism and play the victim. Got it. Good luck with that strategy.
Blackface has a long history, and was used by countless performers, white and black. It wasn't just the color of the makeup, but also the caricature of the alleged look of blacks. Clown makeup has been used by clowns, including the very famous makeup Heath Ledger wore for the Joker.
Yes, people who look at this as see something racial are wrong and deserve to be mocked.
When OJ was shown in black and white on Newsweek, and was a bit darker than usual, some saw race. (Though they didn't see race in a ridiculously whitened eyeball photoshopping of Condoleezza Rice, which was unquestionably a shot at her, though not a racial one.) When Michael Jordan was shown as a child on the cover of Esquire from an actual photo, some saw race.
I could list quite a few other examples. The point is that either these people need to get a life, or worse, they think they have a convenient weapon to use against anyone who criticizes anything they don't like. Either way, they're hurting themselves and they're making racial healing harder, not easier.
So now we see what post-partisanshp mean: walking on eggshells all the time.
So the only two choices are to walk on eggshells or mock and demean as beneath contempt. Here's hoping folks use all that saved mental effort for something productive.
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