Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters (whom I interviewed last week) has a tale of two attempts at speaking satire to power. On the left (appropriately enough), a parody that ran in the BDS-obsessed Vanity Fair magazine last year, as The Dark Knight played in theaters (and whose subtext was viewed as — very likely unintentionally — sympathetic to President Bush, as Andrew Klavan wrote). On the right, an unknown Photoshop artist apparently living in Los Angeles, or possibly the very city that stood in for Gotham in The Dark Knight:
As Allahpundit writes:
Hey, remember when it was cool to demonize the president, or even the presidential or vice-presidential nominee? Sarahcuda had been on the national stage for all of eight weeks last year before she got the rabid vampire treatment. [As had Bush, by the Village Voice a few years earlier -- Ed] Ah well. Change has come to America — and to the LA Weekly. Click here and be amazed at the hypocrisy of which our intellectually superior progressive betters are capable.
Mark Hemingway tosses L.A. Weekly’s hypocrisy right back at them:
And while we’re talking about double standards, I notice that L.A. Weekly blog which looked at the the Obama Joker poster and declared it so obviously racist that “the only thing missing is a noose” didn’t seem to have a problem with an actual, as opposeed to feverishly imagined, depiction of lynching Sarah Palin.
Or as Jim Treacher asks, “Why So Spurious?”
But really, at this point, why be amazed? The left’s hypocrisy in these matters is merely yet another attempt, tacitly in this case, to epater les bourgeois. All the more so, since most leftwing attempts at political satire all too often end up as humorless sledgehammer parodies such as this.
Update: “Not as shocking as the JokerObama poster, but I like to think it gets the point across”:
More: Confederate Yankee spots the puritanical left having their weekly conniption fit and replies, “Frankly, I don’t get it”:
One embraces terrorists and madmen, is dedicated to anarchy and the destruction of capitalist society, and sends the population fleeing in horror from his creations.
The other is a fictional character played by the late Heath Ledger.
Heh.™
Update: Michelle Malkin walks readers through the assassination chic of the previous eight years to remind them how quickly (and selectively) the left forgets — or as Kathy Shaidle puts it, “‘Progressives’ should rename themselves the ‘Oh-But-That’s-Different’s’.”
Update: For those who like their swag with a Jack Napier-inspired swagger, T-Shirts (from multiple venders) are available in the lobby!
More: Jim Treacher discovers that “There’s nothing like making a new fan!”
Update: “When is ‘Whiteface’ Okay? When the ‘New York Times’ Says So.”
Once Obama got elected, you knew the old canards (like dissent is patriotic) would fall away. But so soon? Aren’t there any brave Lefties willing to remind their peers about the hate aimed at Bush for the past eight years, and put things like this in context?
Christian,
So soon, indeed. But hey, Lileks forecast this trend on election night.
I don’t know, I kinda like the irony of turning a socialists poster in to a capitalist venture
that’s got to cause the left a rash or something.
http://www.cafepress.com/4therepublic
What really gets to me, is they have to at some point deep inside after the lights go out and before they go to sleep, see what they do for what it is. They have to have even a tiny nagging sense, they soiled their integrity.
Don’t they?
We get enough former liberals to have hope they may many of them someday see the light about leftist, statist policies. Is the trigger to opening a mind something we can access, or is it something based purely on the individual, case by case?
You needn’t answer, I’m just a guy in Ohio, but I wonder about things, and no man can get too much education.
Obama as a clown=racist
GOP chairman Michael Steele as a clown=Funny
At least that’s what Huffpost contributor Daniel Kurtzman thinks it is funny.
http://garychapelhill.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/more-hypocritical-accusations-of-racism-from-the-obamamedia/
Yeah, I guess seven people going after one LAWeekly post is a puritanical leftist conniption fit.
Ed: No, not until now.