Obama Joker poster - Why so serious?

On July 8, 2009, I posted on this blog a piece entitled "Joker in the White House?" I view The Dark Knight as the movie of the decade that deals with the primary issue of our time: How far do we compromise our own values to stop the terrorists?

My primary point in that post was that a quote from The Dark Knight where Alfred the Butler told Bruce Wayne regarding the mob's hiring of the Joker "and in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn't fully understand" sounded strangely appropriate.

I immediately thought of the situation in this country where voters turned to a man who (unexpectedly, at least to some) appears to be leading the U.S. headlong into socialism.

Apparently this idea was not unique to me. Over the weekend, posters of Obama made up like Heath Ledger's Joker have been appearing in Los Angeles.

Liberals are becoming unhinged. The liberal L.A. Weekly stated: "The only thing missing is a noose." Los Angeles Urban Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson stated that the poster was "politically mean spirited and dangerous." Others have called the poster "racist" because of the white clown make up. Some bloggers have called the poster a "threat to national security," while others wondered "how do we punish this."

For the record, these guerrilla art posters have been appearing in L.A. for decades and have depicted every president since Reagan. Vanity Fair put a similar picture of George W. Bush as the Joker on its July 29, 2008 Politics and Power Blog. Where was the liberal outrage then?

I would like to ask all the liberals wetting themselves over the poster: "Why so serious?"

On further reflection, there are other appropriate lines from The Dark Knight presently applicable to Obama:

"Do I really look like a guy with a plan."

"Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos."

"All you care about is money. This town deserves a better class of criminal and I'm gonna give it to them."

"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

One last question: Is dissent still the highest form of patriotism?