The folks over at Infowars.com continue to find new and wildly strange ways to adapt the Obama-Joker image for their propaganda. Here’s some posters spotted in Los Angeles depicting the president as a pregnant elitist with a belly full of swine flu, a striking parody of a certain snooty magazine’s iconic cover.
Photo by Lord Jim
The slightly schizophrenic Obama-Joker image continues to morph and take on new meanings. After Flickr removed the original created by artist Firas Khateeb and reportedly deleted accounts that reposted it, some of its users are still undeterred. It can still be found all over the site, often accompanied by commentary. “I uploaded this to support free speech. I don’t agree with the sentiments necessarily,” writes a flickr user. Another free speech supporter decided that agitation was the best method for fighting the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing mammoth, “Might as well make whoever is sending take down notices busy.” Or this person, who takes a more blunt approach in questioning the hypocritical policy, “Flickr sucks ass for its one-sided personally motivated censorship and politics.”
The Los Angeles Times identified Firas Khateeb as the artist who modified a Time magazine cover featuring Barack Obama and gave it the Joker treatment (pictured middle), but now everyone’s wondering who cleaned up the image and added the key word: “Socialism.” We thought it could be this Flickr user who did a “quick and dirty Photoshop” and credited Khateeb on August 4th, but the dates don’t really work out since the posters were first spotted back in April. So if you see something, say something
Not only does Shepard Fairey hate vandalism, but the heavily-borrowing wheatpaster also isn’t fond of street art he doesn’t agree with. When asked about the meme worthy Obama-Joker poster, he kind of compared it to the infamous Splasher who used to target his work, in that he completely dismissed it. He also says whoever made it was probably dumb, telling the Los Angeles Times, “I have my doubts about the person’s intelligence,” adding, “It’s not grammatically correct. It would be ‘socialist’ … Obama is not Marx. He didn’t create socialism.” |LAT|
The internet famous Obama-Joker image that’s already reached official meme status, was glued to a few mailboxes outside a post office in Central Florida—a federal crime! But unlike the versions in LA, the word “Socialist” is replaced with the URL to conspiracy theorist website Infowars.com, leading us to wonder whether the person was politically inspired or financially motivated. |WFTV|
With the viral success generated by the Obama-Joker poster, the opportunistic custom toy makers at Herobuilders whipped up this menacing 12″ action figure of the president in whiteface. The perfect gift for tea baggers, birthers, and astro turfers alike, it’s limited to 2000 pieces and can be purchased here ($50).
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