President Obama as The Joker

*Originally published on 8/11/09



You may have heard that someone made posters with President Barack Obama wearing Joker makeup. It's been a pretty big story in the news and it has created quite a controversy.
At first glance, the poster doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Obama's a pretty far left guy. He wants to create a system of order, whereas the Joker is an extreme anarchist. He wants to tear down any semblance of order and wreak chaos wherever he can. So at face value (no pun intended) the picture doesn't fit.

I do find it kind of funny though, that during the campaign, Obama was frequently compared to Harvey Dent, another character in The Dark Knight. It's possible that the creator of the poster had this reversal in mind when he put Joker makeup on the president. The Harvey Dent comparison made quite a bit of sense and was easy to make (though the release of Barack Obama commemorative coins was off putting given the connection).

Going back to the Joker, maybe the joke is something else entirely. It doesn't have to be a 1 to 1 connection like Obama/Dent. Obama ran on the idea that he was a moderate. His record was pretty leftist, but he expressed a desire to hear the opposition's ideas to come up with the best plan possible. He was a pragmatist above all else. Obama said that he was going to put an end to partisan politics.

So far, every instance of criticism (a significant amount of which has been raising legitimate questions) has been met with "Oh, that's just crazy Fox watching conservatives. I don't care what they say". People got together to protest the stimulus package trying to recreate the Boston tea party. People on the left giggled and made jokes (understandable given the rallying cry, the conservatives walked into that one) but the message of cutting government spending was largely ignored.

Obama's healthcare plan has been met with some resistance as well. The response has been the same. "Oh, this is manufactured anger" etc.

What happened to sitting down and discussing the issues to reach a compromise? Rachel Maddow does it, O'Reilly does it, even Jon Stewart does it. Though I rolled my eyes when he mocked the woman who questioned the government's ability to manage healthcare when they couldn't even handle Cash 4 Clunkers. Yeah, you can't dismiss legitimate points just because you disagree.

Despite his claims to the contrary, politics are more partisan than ever.

Some say that the poster is racist. Oy, alright, the poster isn't racist. I can kinda see why the question would come up, but I don't think that's the case here. It's a movie reference. You can put that make up on anyone and people would still get what you were going for. People did the same thing to President Bush and I'm sure there are others that will end up getting the Joker treatment in the future. This has more legitimacy than some of the other claims, such as Janeane Garofolo's claim that anyone who disagrees with the President is a racist, but I doubt the racial angle was a component when the person made the poster.

I've also heard people express the sentiment of "How dare you! He's the president, you can't compare him to this homicidal madman, it's disrespectful!" This would be a good point, except for the fact that these are the same people who spent the last 8 years comparing Bush to the Joker, Satan, and Hitler. He was called a lying, fascist, Nazi, war monger who ate babies and stole your socks from the dryer when you weren't looking.

Let's get this out of the way right now, George Bush was not Hitler, Barack Obama is not Hitler. Hitler was Hitler. Someone I know clarified, saying that Obama is like Hitler only in the way that he rose to power by winning over the masses with charisma and rhetoric. OK, maybe, but you could make that claim for a lot of politicians. The connotation of the Hitler comparison is too strong to throw it around so lightly.

The Joker comparison may be a bit extreme. Mr. J is, after all, an agent of evil. Obama may be a socialist, but socialism doesn't equal evil. People shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it either, as there was definitely a joke involved.