Targeted: Does this photo of Barack Obama go too far?
WorldNetDaily
"Provocative."
"Unapologetic."
"Eye-catching."
The adjectives used to promote WorldNetWeekly – WND's latest innovation – ring ever more accurately as the online news magazine's latest cover is currently igniting emotion and outrage across blog posts and online forums.
At 400 animated, interactive pages, WorldNetWeekly's online news-magazine experience requires at least electronically "thumbing" through the free issue to realize just what a reading revolution it really is. But that hasn't stopped many in the blogosphere from judging it by its cover.
Featuring President Obama with a tomato splattered squarely on his nose, the image signifies not just a thorough booing of him and his policies but is positioned to liken him to common clown costuming. That latter point is reflected in the issue's headline, "Enough clowning: Americans rejecting 'greatest snow-job on Earth.'"
Such symbiotic satire was lost on those who projected criminal intents onto the tomato.
President George W. Bush featured on a T-shirt suggesting he duck to avoid a shoe thrown at him. |
At CrooksandLiars.com "Liberalicious" asked, "Is it just me or does that tomato splat in the graphic look like a bullet hole?"
Under the headline "Advertising For Obama's Assassination," many at FreakOutNation.com reacted in ways that lived up to the site's name.
"This picture isn't even subtle enough to be called subliminal," posted AlphaAnt1. "It is what it is, loud and clear, the assassination of President Obama."
The "psychic violence" moved one poster – who "almost never" cries – to tears.
"If there is no organized group that will expose WorldNetDaily for their grotesque inhumanity," wrote Aviva Gabriel, "then it's up to individuals (like me, like you) to organize and take this garbage behavior back to the gutter where it belongs."
Censoring the press was a suggested solution. "Freedom of the press or not," BobbeeJ opined, "that was created when people had a conscience … these people do not."
President George W. Bush was often likened to Adolf Hitler by some on the left. |
"We had EIGHT LONG YEARS of Duh-bya Bush and didn't have to see anything like that, but we have to look at crap like this after only one year of Obama?!!" exclaimed Will. "That's the basic difference between the left and the right. We hated Bush but never wished him dead."
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A writer named "Anok" concurred, writing, "This type of imagery never even graced the pages of magazines, newspapers, general media or the like – which is telling. We didn't need to be upset by it because, even as upset at Bush as we were, we never stooped that low to begin with."
Will and Anok may not remember the proliferation of venomous anti-Bush commentary. In one version of her video for "American Life," Madonna lobbed a grenade at a Bush lookalike. And the 2006 film "Death of a President" features a sniper shooting Bush in Chicago – which one poster to FreakOutNation.com recalled.
"Melodrama much?" wrote Evan. "How an image of Obama with a tomato thrown on it is supposedly promoting his assassination is totally beyond me. I didn't see anyone on the left decrying a movie made about the assassination of George Bush, or books fantasizing about the assassination of George Bush, or protesters hanging or burning effigies of Bush or people calling for his assassination. What do they freak out about? A tomato. A rotten tomato for a rotten president."
At the website for MSNBC personality Ed Schultz, Merickson wrote, "Throwing rotten vegetables at politicians is a time honored American practice that has fallen out of use. Its (sic) not a death threat. Rude & disrespectful, but not a death threat. (As the cover suggests, accuracy when tossing out accusations is important.)"
Even an open WND critic at Digg.com tried to quell the frenzy.
"Look, I hate WND as much as the next person, but it's a fricken' (sic) tomato," posted flip2trip. "It doesn't look like a bullet hole because there is a tomato where the hole should be. Quit trying to manufacture outrage."
March 9, 2010