Why so socialist unmasking the joker

Last fall, I spoke at the University of Oregon about the role of popular and participatory culture in the American Presidential campaign. Many of the ideas in that talk had taken shape through this blog. I also made passing reference in this talk to a discussion of the Anonymous movement which one of my graduate students posted on this blog.

In the audience for the talk was a PhD candidate Whitney Phillips who is doing research on transgressive humor on the internet with particular focus on the group 4Chan. This past week, she shared with me a thought piece she had drafted about some recent images of Obama which are making their rounds online and have been deployed on both the left and the right in response to current debates about health care.

In the piece below, Whitney Phillips dissects where these images come from and the different ways they have been deployed as they have circulated across the web.

A few weeks ago, a photoshopped image of President Obama surfaced online. So far, no one seems to know the answer. That said, there is one point of agreement. No one knows who the culprit might be, leaving both sides quite puzzled. Or is it something else, something more sinister? The answer to this riddle can be found on 4chan, an enormously popular—and much maligned—image board home to gamers and trolls.

Intimate knowledge of this group is not necessary to feeling its influence; generally speaking, whenever an internet meme reaches critical mass, it is safe to assume that Anonymous had something to do with it. When The Dark Knight was released in , Anonymous immediately embraced the film and generated a veritable fleet of new memes. Anonymous collectively revved up its photoshop engines, sparing very few targets. Thus, why so socialist. By early August, the image had gone viral, enraging progressives and earning plaudits from conservatives.

Now, thanks to some gumshoeing by the folks over at the Los Angeles Times , the creator of the portrait has been unmasked. And guess what? He supported the liberal candidate Dennis Kucinich. Alkhateeb's original creation was a fake Time magazine cover. The image sat on Flickr for several months before a second, anonymous artist created the more familiar work, pictured at right.

The portrait was intended to take Obama down a notch, Alkhateeb told the Times. Many found Alkhateeb's work to be particularly vicious. Many commenters on this site agreed. On Aug. They are out of real ideas and all they have left is scorched earth. This represents their typical projection and emotes who they really are: jokers with the burned out eyes.

Others expressed interest in buying stickers or T-shirts emblazoned with the image. Editor's note: The original post named Alkhateeb as the creator of the image pictured here. In fact, Alkhateeb created a fake Time magazine cover with a"Jokerized" Obama, which was appropriated by a different — and as of yet unnamed — artist. Et toi? Already a subscriber? Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in.

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