The Nation: Conservatives are the Real Joker

[marmar]

Conservatives are the Real Joker
posted by Melissa Harris-Lacewell on 08/04/2009 @ 11:10pm


SOCIALISM is the tag line of a bizarre new campaign against President Obama. The word "Socialism" appears across an image portraying President Obama as Heath Ledger's Joker in last year's The Dark Knight. The Obama/Joker mash-ups have appeared on posters in Los Angeles, have gone viral on the Internet, and are available as t-shirts, mugs, and other political swag.

It seems that some elements of America's fringe Right have become embarrassingly Freudian. This is a clear cut case of projection. The Right is the Joker, not President Obama.

Heath Ledger's edgy, dark portrayal of the Joker was remarkable and disturbing precisely because it was rooted in irresistible chaos, not in tight control. If Obama's critics are trying to claim he is a big-government loving, bureaucracy building, state-control planning mastermind then they could not have chosen a worse image than Ledger's Joker.

Joker's evil is banal, random, gleeful and almost effortless. "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?" he asks.

If the current political moment were mapped onto The Dark Knight script, it would be the right wing fringe of the GOP cast as the chaos-inducing Joker. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/459182/conservatives_are_the_real_joker