Obama Joker artist revealed

Discussion in 'Politics' started by countezero, Aug 18, 2009.

  1. countezero Registered Senior Member

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  3. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Was he supposed to admit that he thought about race while doing it? The fact that he's a Democrat or that he didn't openly admit the thought occurred to him isn't evidence of much. Democrats are just as racist and anybody else and virtually nobody *admits* to being a racist in this country. Even people who want all the blacks to move back to Africa sometimes claim they are not racist here.

    All I can say (as I wrote before) is I don't know what he was thinking, but he's not a deep thinker if the possible racial interpretation never occurred to him.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That isn't the guy who made and distributed the poster at issue.

    And he is a guy who describes the people of Chicago as "very, very liberal".

    But he does have a credible reason for being ignorant of the whiteface implications, if he was (he doesn't say), unlike whoever lifted his image. That doesn't change them.

    The potential of a fellow traveler alliance between the worldview of the 27% and the ME Muslim crowd bemuses - it's been pointed out before, but only by their mutual enemies.
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2009
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  7. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    So if no racist implications apply to people about particular things, they are not "deep thinkers" ?
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Anyone who puts Obama in whiteface, as a clown, on a political poster, in the US, in 2009, and fails to notice the racial loading, is either an innocent (foreign, naive, childishly ignorant), or pretty damn dumb.

    And anyone who describes the general public of Chicago as "very, very liberal" is claiming one of just a few pigeonholes in the ideological spectrum, the good fit depending on what "liberal" codes for in their context.

    The interview, as presented, dodged any questions that would shed light on that.
     
  9. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    I am saying that if you take the time to use Photoshop paint a black man's face white, let alone painting the first black President of the United States white and it doesn't occur to you that some people are going to think that there are racial implications to that, then you are dumb.

    If you put pointed ears on him and do not realise that some people are going to think "elf or Vulcan?" that would be similarly dumb.
     
  10. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    And he has a muslim background. How hilarious.

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    Told you guys to cool it. Race-baiting blows.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The poster, which the Muslim didn't make or disseminate, was race-baiting - big time.

    No reason not to call it.
     
  12. Ganymede Valued Senior Member

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    The motives are clear when an elected official such as Georgia Congressman David Scott starts receiving those pictures with racial slurs tattered across them. The picture is intended for character assassination that's appealing to no one but the Faux News base.
     
  13. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Is the implication supposed to be that people with "Muslim backgrounds" are never racist?
     
  14. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    It occurred to me, briefly, and I discarded it. What exactly would the racial slur be? That Obama really is white? That he is less Democrat because of it? That he likes poorly applied red lipstick? (That he resembles thereby a soccer mom? :shrug

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    Or is its meaning rather that he - like the Joker - is a madman without regard for rationality? The latter interpretation of the insult seems far, far more likely to me. Otherwise why not just put him in 1930's vaudeville whiteface, without reference to any modern topical character? Why not portray him as an African native, as has been done previously? I think we'd all be smart enough to catch the inference. It seems almost more likely that it might be about catching our own prejudices in assuming this was about race.

    Imagining this is about race is based on the drive to see it about race. Look at the way you're phrasing your comments - "well, he's a Democrat, but that doesn't mean he isn't racist". !! You're taking it as delivered that it must have a racial meaning, and therefore that the perpetrator (if he must be considered that) is thereby a racist, but ignoring the far clearer and more topical social-economic implication. The Dems have been no better on this issue, calling for the "guilty party" to out himself. Good grief, gentlemen.
     
  15. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Isn't Obama 50% white? Whats wrong with being white?
     
  16. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Precisely. Character assassination, which is in this case to do with the connection to the Joker, a maniacal sociopath.
     
  17. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    My offered implication was that the picture might mean he was an "Oreo", as the saying apparently goes. Google it. That's not what I think it's about; it was merely a possible if unlikely offering.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The meme combination of black clown playing white on stage and the evil Joker is effective, IMHO.

    It's no wonder it caught on, pretty much always taken as racially loaded of course. Because it is.
     
  19. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    A highly successful gimmick, in fact. Its getting free advertising from its opponents.
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    This and that

    Perhaps it speaks to the priorities of Obama's opponents more than anything else, but I am more and more amused by the "reverse racism" of the image:

    The thing about the whiteface is that it's sort of paradoxical. There is, somewhere in the annals of American cinema, this hilarious scene where a black butler is frightened by a ghost. They essentially did a stop-motion animation in which pieces of clay or putty were applied to the actor's face; you could see each new piece in the frames—he was scared white by a ghost.

    And while those roles are oft derided in the modern day for their appeals to stereotype, I do find interesting the idea that a black man becomes white when he's scared senseless.

    Likewise, the Obama whiteface. If we must drag race into this, we should also consider the value of making Obama white in order to depict him as a sociopath.

    (#2341389/67)

    • • •​

    American history includes the one-eighth standard of Plessy v. Ferguson (Homer Plessy was one-eighth black, therefore he was black and had to travel in the train car reserved for blacks), and the "one-drop rule" by which having "one drop" of black blood made you black.

    It's only as Obama advanced toward the presidency that many Americans scrambled to redefine. Yes, Obama is half white, but that's never cut it before in the American race discussion.

    (Interestingly, the lone dissenting vote in Plessy was cast by Justice John Harlan, who had, in his lifetime, owned slaves; it is a fascinating dissent. The 7 to 1 vote set a fifty-eight year precedent known as "separate but equal" that would not be undone until the famous Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous decision of the Warren Court.)
    ____________________

    Notes:

    "John Marshall Harlan". Wikipedia.com. August 19, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marshall_Harlan

    Harlan, J. John M. "Dissenting Opinion". Plessy v. Ferguson. Supreme Court of the United States. May 18, 1896. Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. August 19, 2009. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0163_0537_ZD.html
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2009
  21. Ganymede Valued Senior Member

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    That's what the Republican party has come to. Instead of pushing sound policy initiatives they've resorted to coloring books and card board cut outs of fictitious comic book characters.
     
  22. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Eh? The only meme in the poster is the Joker one.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Black man playing white is a meme, directly and overtly associated with Obama throughout his campaign. Black man clown for the white is a meme. As the people spamming with that poster recognized immediately, by all appearances.
     

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