User:MetricSuperstar/ObamaJokerPoster

thumb|Heath Ledger as the Joker.

The Barack Obama "Joker" poster is an image of Barack Obama designed by Firas Alkhateeb, that has been adopted by critics of the Obama administration. The image portrays Barack Obama as the Batman archvillain the Joker, based on the portrayal by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight film. Alkhateeb uploded the image to the photo-sharing website Flickr, from where it was taken, and the label "socialism" was written below.

Origin
The image was originally created without the socialism tag by Alkhateeb, a 20-year-old history student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He digitally manipulated the Barack Obama photograph used for the October 2006 TIME Magazine cover, using Adobe Photoshop. He was inspired by Shepard Fairey's Obama "Hope" poster and wanted to practice a "Jokerise" technique he learned at class. He digitally painted the Joker face paint over the Obama image and uploaded it to Flickr on January 18, 2009. Firas is said to have had no ill-feelings towards the president but was simply bored.

Reaction
The image was largely unnoticed until an unknown person added the label "socialism" to it and starting placing posters of the image around Los Angeles. The image quickly became the center of a "media typhoon" widely covered by news outlets such as CNN and Fox News, with the image variously praised for its artistic value and dubbed racist. The Washingon Post described it as a "subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument". Conservative critic Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker described it as "open mockery of Barack Obama, as disillusionment sets in with the man", with The First Post suggesting that the image marks "a turning of the tide of public opinion against a president who promised so much".

The image has been adopted by critics of Obama and has since been turned into posters, t-shirts, bumper stickers and other merchandise. In particular, the image is considered a symbol of the Tea Party protest movement.

In response to the publicity, Flickr removed all copies of the image, citing a DMCA takedown notice, and deleted forum threads discussing the image. The takedown was met with much backlash from the Flickr community and caused Flickr to change their DMCA takedown policy. The new policy provides for a page to remain if a takedown notice is filed against it, but for the image to be replaced with one that reads "This image has been removed due to a claim of copyright infringement."

Criticism
A number of people, including Democrats, have dismissed the image as being racist. They have suggested the the image is a photo negative of a Black-and-White Minstrel. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable is quoted as saying "Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery. It is mean-spirited and dangerous. We have issued a public challenge to the person or group that put up the poster to come forth and publicly tell why they have used this offensive depiction to ridicule President Obama."

Alkhateeb, in response to the usage of his image, declared "To accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?".