Ohgoodie, there's a badlandian-twist to the recent Obama as Joker street art images that are appearing all over the united states. Over at Newsbusters in "Obama Joker Poster Stirs Outrage, Bush Joker Poster Not So Much" they point out that last year when Bush was depicted as the Joker in Vanity Fair done by Drew Friedman, people weren't as outraged.

Then again that wasn't street art seen everywhere either. The creepy part of the Obama poster is that it seems to be a campaign not done by street artists. Over at Metafilter sef-described "one of the guys who co-founded Andre The Giant has a posse" comments on these posters with the zing-twist at the end:

Oh. And one other thing. This is slight, but for the trained eye it's gold. You know that whole, Frank Shepard Fairey vs. AP vs. AP photographer hullabaloo over fair use and the Fairey Obama campaign poster? Well, anyone recognize the Joker-fied Obama image? Say, from the cover of TIME magazine?
Now that's irony!

At this point, it's so meta it's making my head spin.

People question if this is a "real" campaign, that is, decided in a board room somewhere and fueled by PR agencies. Well, it could be, adland is no stranger to using the language and channels of the youth to spread their message. Nissan did it in 2003, Sagatiba got backlash for it in 2005, Nike got in trouble in Singapore because their graffitti ads looked too real. Advertising has been flying under the radar and tagging slogans under the feet of punters since the dawn of time, really. So how will we know if this is real street art or an organized campaign produced by conservatives? All we really know is that it's kind of stupid. Everyone knows the Joker is an Anarchist Sheesh. ;)

Update : Przydzial filed the Flickr "Obama Joker" image takedown request. Because Przydzial originally made it