Obama, Bush and the Joker: Cultural double standard?

Culture Monster has been getting a ton of feedback regarding our post on the Obama-as-Joker poster that popped up this week around L.A. and has morphed into an online avalanche.

A number of comments mention that last year, Vanity Fair ran an illustrated caricature of then-president George W. Bush in a similar Heath Ledger Joker-face.

The main question Culture Monster readers seem to be asking is: Why is Obama-as-Joker more objectionable (or worthy of coverage) than Bush-as-Joker? Some examples below:

-- Y'all didn't mind it so much when the Joker was Bush in Vanity Fair, huh?

-- The Obama version is an author-less creation of unknown provenance. The Bush version's provenance is well known: it was created by Drew Friedman and was published on Vanity Fair's website in July 2008, which means that it went through (at least some) editorial approval process before it ended up online.  Vanity Fair even gave the drawing a headline in the form of a question ("George W. Bush: Comic-Book Villain?"), as if to take some of the political sting off of the cartoon.

-- Since when is it disturbing to lampoon or posterize the president of this nation? If the so-called journalists would take the time to do just a bit of research they would find that this is an American tradition - and it should NOT make a difference what color the Chief of State happens to be.

-- It must be said: Bush-as-Joker doesn't look very much like George W. Bush. If it weren't for the headline, you would be hard-pressed to identify who exactly the cartoonist is trying to parody. Why does this matter?

What about you -- what's your opinion?

-- David Ng

Photo: Heath Ledger as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." Credit: Warner Bros.

Comments

[ruben]

Total double standard! When were all these people when this was done to Bush? This makes liberals look like they can dish it out but can't take it. Why should anyone walk on eggshells for Obama? I think it's time for change!

[Mike]

There has been a double standard for Left and Right as long as I can remember. This newbee in the West Wing is the extreme example. it is almost like the country has elected a dictatorr such as Korea and Iran where the people will be executed if they speak out. I remember Hillary's words about Being sick and tired of not being patriotic if you speak out against this administration. As long as this regime does not repeal the first admendment, the people have a right to speak out against the government.

[Marky Mark]

Double standard? Yes and no. The American Left and Right have different standards and both push their agendas hard and, as a result, tend to lean towards hipocracy.

However, there is also a presidential grace period. If the "Bush" joker illustration appear 200 days into his first term, there would have be a bit of an outcry.

Have no fear - two or three years from now there will be plenty of other depictions of Obama that his supporters will howl about but won't get much attention from the press anymore.

[Hemmingplay]

To me the chief executive of either party is more or less fair game for caricaturists and satirists. I'm for Obama, but even I realize he's gonna take his share of shots, above and below the belt.

I hadn't seen the Joker caricature of Bush, but I actually find either one a little troubling for a different reason. The Heath Ledger Joker character was actually a purely evil psychopathic monster, bent on turning all Good into Evil. Is that really what we've come to in our public/political discourse, that it's now OK to vilify the sitting president with comparisons like this?

I think we're becoming too used to nasty, personal attacks, and too often don't stop to think about the implications of using a comparison like this -- no matter who is the target -- in a sophomoric effort to be funny.

[Tim Bandy]

It seems that any time an artist tries to use Obama in any cartoon, the liberal press goes nuts. When the New York Post ran a cartoon implying that the stimulus package was so bad a monkey could have written it the press cried and tried to claim racism. YET, you can look back and find tons of cartoons portraying Bush as a monkey.

Now people are trying to link a "character" of the joker; (who has traditionally in comics and on screen worn white face paint) to racist minstrel shows of the past and scream racism. Silly, stupid and insulting. Maybe the artist was trying to get your attention in the same way a clown would. Maybe people are trying to read too far into the statement and they should be focusing more on the word that displays below the image SOCIALISM.

Socialism is: "An economic system in which the basic means of production are primarily owned and controlled collectively, usually by government under some system of central planning."

[Josh T.]

I'm a democrat as they come and I can easily see this as a double standard.
...
It's funny how they placed that "hill-billy" like comment as the first one
for the Bush support line:
"-- Y'all didn't mind it so much when the Joker was Bush in Vanity Fair, huh?"
Another double standard.
Sometimes it makes me sick to be a liberal.

[randall enos]

It was fine to do Bush as the Joker but not Obama simply because Bush is evil and Obama isn't.....simple.
Obama as the Joker simply has no meaning.

[Andrew K]

Firstly it's not an apt metaphor. Bush slaughtered the Bill of Rights, went to war illegally, left Katrinans to die and and ran roughshod over the country. Although Obama continues some of those policies that were already in place, he hasn't done 1% of the crimes that Bush has.

[sir jorge]

it's a complete double standard, and anyone that disagrees is obviously an idiot

[Chris]

As Bernard Goldberg perfectly identified it in his book, there is a genuine "thrill up the log" love affair between President Obama and the American media. You can insult normal politicians, left and right, but not those politicians on whom the media have developed a "crush." How long the crush lasts is unknown but the Kennedy crush is still in effect for those oldies who remember him, So... for the rest of us, this is likely to be a nauseating four years.

[Hostile Gospel]

Read the article, "Gotham’s Finest: How Obama Unites the Joker and Socialism While Dividing the Art Critics" over at Brave New Post!

[Russ Burlingame]

There is of course a double-standard. The Obama people have worked very hard behind-the-scenes to make sure that race and racism are paid close attention to and pointed out, while publicly claiming to be colorblind.

That said, this is a terrible example. The Vanity Fair story was created when the movie was still current, was an original piece of art, and had a particular line of reasoning (as recently explained by the artist) that made sense. The Obama poster seems to be just somebody using the Joker's appearance as a cheap shot. Qualitatively there's a difference that goes beyond Obama's double-standard.

[Jenny Garcia]

Of course it's a double standard just because he is part african it's a big deal. Boo hoo get over it already if other presidents have been portrayed the same or similiar what makes him any different. You want equality there you go enjoy it!!!!

[Katherine]

obama is a fraud, he helped rip off people in chicago and now you get to see one of our politicians go prime time, everything he says will be twisted in reality, bush was a total nutcase obama is a complete liar, his cabinet is full of lobbyists and bankers all the liberals need to wake up,

i was one liberal once but no longer, bush was a fraud, so is obama, you like being in power, where are our soldiers??? still over there on a UN resolution and a phony document! you think im right wing because i can see obama is a fraud? NO NEVER EVER EVER- all of you liberals will cry like babies when the repubbies elect newt gingrich as president, then when you morph his face into a pig [which wont take much to do] he will have you arrested and fined under obama's HATE SPEECH law because it hurt his feelings.

study socialism idiots, learn who its forefathers were - a bunch of eugenicists

get out of the false dialectic the false left v.s. right paradigm start thinking for yourself

[nathan]

No Double standard. I'm an obama supporter and I think it's perfectly fair to publish whatever you want about him. I've seen plenty of stuff come from this agency covering all sides of the story. Dissent over obama is news-worthy considering how overwhelming was the popular vote. When Bush was president, it would have been impossible to cover every negative story, because he was so very unpopular and quite frankly it was old news after the botched 911 response, and the botched katrina response, and the botched war in iraq, and the botched... you get the point. That said, I think it's a little early to start calling him a joker 6 months in, especially with him exceeding expectations on the economy, and his clunkers bill doing so unimaginably well for the auto industry. I'm not sure what there is to criticize at this point. His comments on the gates case? oh, let's mention the clinton impeachment thing while we're at it. None of that has any bearing on the state of affairs. Obama has shined in his short time in office. Let's give him a year or two before we start with the joker jokes. It just showes how out of touch the right wing supporters are. They can't even see progress when it's happening. Or maybe they don't know what it is even. Like they're on a mission to return us to the dark ages or something. Go Obama. Go USA!

[Norm]

It is usually liberals that try to stomp on free speech. Odd that.

[ED]

Drew Friedman who sketched Bush put it well:

"My image was done the week the Batman movie came out, and I think works well using the analogy of the Joker, an agent of chaos, destruction and death, all the while laughing through it all, as Bush, seemingly laughing and unmoved through the destruction reaped by his war in Iraq. The Obama/Joker image just doesn't work as satire, humor or anything else. You can put the white face Joker makeup on any celebrity or politician and you'd have a provocative, negative image, but beyond that, what's the actual point? What does being a supposed Socialist have to do with The Joker?"
http://www.drawger.com/drewfriedman/?article_id=8462

The real double-standard is it's an "outrage" if "baby killer" were put on Bush's poster, never mind that the *facts* are he did kill thousands of Iraqi babies...but it's "ok" to put "socialist" on Obama,whose policies are miles to the right of your mainstream middle of the road European, where even the Conservatives admit the need for a public nonprofit universal health insurance...Our country has been taken over by a spectrum from moderate to conservative to uber-right-wing