When I first saw this image last week, I was delighted. I pasted it on my Facebook page with the comment "Someone has it nailed!", hoping to provoke a bit of commentary. None. Seems none of my Facebook friends wanted to touch this with a ten-foot pole. A few days later, I read that some people were offended by the picture. After all, it shows Obama in white face, referencing the disparaging reality of our collective past, when black men appeared on stage in white face, caricaturing themselves so as to be more acceptable, less threatening, than unmasked black men. Frankly, that hadn't occurred to me. I saw Obama as the joker. Batman's nemesis. Heath Ledger's undoing. The Wild Card in the political deck.
I liked it because it echoed the image of Obama that became so ubiquitous during the campaign -- the portrait not of a politican but of an earnest citizen, computer regenerated, redefining Hope in a single Super Man. That image, the Obamicon image, has become a part of our collective American psyche. This image, the Obamajoker, takes the Obamicon image and sets it on its heels.
The Obamajoker is a challenge to Obama-mania. The image asks, "Is he who you think he is?" The Obamajoker is not the purveyor of hope, but of socialism! "Is this what you were hoping for?" The Obamajoker gets under your skin, unsettles your stomach, makes you clench your jaw, maybe even haunts your dreams... Is it funny? Only if you think these are hilarious times. Only if you can't stop laughing as you watch what is best about America be legislated away in the name of change.
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