Obama 'Joker' Picture Pops Up In Los Angeles and the Internet

You might not expect liberal Los Angeles, of all places, to be ground zero for anti-Obama sentiment, but that appears to be the case with a new, apparently grassroots campaign in the city. Posters have been spotted on utility poles and walls around town, depicting the president made up grotesquely as The Joker, the infamous Heath Ledger character in "The Dark Knight," with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick. The word "socialism" is printed in bold, dark letters under the image of his face.

Nobody has come forward yet to claim responsibility for the posters, which, of course, only adds to the mystery and fuels Internet speculation.

The poster has also gone viral online, crashing the Web site that first posted images of it and rising to the top of Google's "Today's Hot Trends" list.

Whoever is behind the posters has to be thrilled by the sudden media attention and especially the breast-beating overreaction by certain Democrats. Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson was especially melodramatic:

"Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery," says Hutchinson. "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."

For some reason Hutchinson wasn't nearly so upset when President George W. Bush was depicted with devil horns.

A bigger question than who's responsible for the poster is what does The Joker have to do with socialism? Isn't he more of an anarchist?

Related: Rush Limbaugh Attacks: Obama, the Joker and Me