This morning I learned (much to my chagrin), that the Obama Joker image I was promoting has not only upset some very prominent people on the left, but it is considered racist in some circles.

They're also saying it is "dangerous."

It may sound a bit counterintuitive, but as I'll explain later I think that this sort of imagery:

is actually more dangerous than this:

As to the criticism of the latter, a piece by Frank J. Fleming alerted me to the problem.

The image quickly spread throughout the internet, gaining knee-jerk liberal condemnation and making people ask things like "What does Obama have to do with the Joker?" and "What does the Joker have to do with socialism?" and "Is this racist somehow? I'm pretty sure it has to be racist."

Well, as it's my job as some guy on the internet, I will definitively answer all of these questions.

First off, it's worth looking at whether the poster is racist. Liberals seem pretty certain it is. An LA Weekly blogger commented that "the only thing missing is a noose."

The poster, which bears a very superficial resemblance to Shepard Fairey's famous Obama Hope illustration, has been pasted on freeway supports and other public surfaces. It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like Ledger's Joker's) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word "Socialism" appears below his face. The only thing missing is a noose.

So I'm not getting it. Is he complaining that there is no noose? Or is he implying that it was dishonest to leave a noose out, because they obviously somehow wanted to put one in? What does a noose have to do with the Joker, anyway? If I really stretch my brain, I can sort of make a connection between the word "socialism" and a noose, because of Lenin's famous reputed saying about how the capitalists would sell Marxists the rope they'd use to hang them, but that doesn't work, either artistically or politically. So that can't be what he means.

Perhaps the absent noose just one of those subtexts within a subtext that you just have to assume is there because it ought to be there. That the designers might as well have put a noose in the image because that is what the critics say they really wanted to put there.

Anyway, while it hurt my feelings to be told that I was helping to circulate an image which might as well have featured a noose I might as well have secretly wanted, what hurt even more was reading that some people think using the poster is "mean-spirited," "dangerous," "offensive," and "goes beyond political spoofery."

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, denounced the image and called on those behind it to reveal themselves. "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."

Then there's the public challenge:"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."

Why?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly didn't do it to "get even" for all the anti-Bush ridicule. I did it because I am horrified by the direction in which this country is headed, and I did it especialy because I knew certain people -- especially those who believe that images of their leader should be treated in a quasi-religious nature -- would find it offensive.

It's a bit like spoofing Che Guevara, and although I am in no way comparing our president to that Communist murderer, there is something in the Shepard Fairey stuff that positively nauseates me, reeking as it does with the stench of the personality cult. Personality cults have a long history of glorification of tyrants, and they are not only un-American in the true sense of the word. I consider them obscene, and I consider them dangerous.

I have zero tolerance for personality cults, and if I see anything resembling one, I consider it fair game for ridicule.

As the Obama Joker poster strikes a much-needed blow at a burgeoning personality cult, it is thus much more than mere political criticism or ridicule of the president. It is a defense of freedom, in the full sense of the word. It is not the Obama Joker poster which is dangerous, but the personality cult at which it is aimed.

Anyway, the main reason I felt the need to "come forth and publicly tell why" is because I don't have to. The United States is still a country where ridiculing personality cults is not literally dangerous, and not the sort of country where we have to "come forth and publicly tell why."

While I can't be sure what he's thinking, it is to be hoped that Earl Ofari Hutchinson considers personality cults more dangerous than their ridicule.

I'd hate to live in a country where personality cults became mandatory, and ridiculing them became dangerous.

Perhaps Mr. Hutchinson should be more careful with his choice of words.