A woman claims she was attacked last week after she tried to take down an anti-Obama flier posted in the Bitter Lake neighborhood.
The woman told police she was walking on 130th and Linden when she noticed an Obama Joker poster—which also had the word “fascism” written on it—on a telephone pole, a police report says.
As the woman began to remove the flier, a man pushing a stroller approached and confronted her. The man “was very agitated and kept screaming about his rights,” the report says, and “began flailing his hands, striking the woman.”
The man, described as a white male between 30 and 49 years old, then left the area.
Police searched the area for the man—who, the report says, also had a young girl with him in the stroller—but could not find him. Police took the Obama poster as evidence in the assault.
I don’t understand what the joker has to do with fascism. If anything, it would be a symbol that Obama is advocating anarchy, which he clearly is not.
But I guess I shouldn’t try to use reason or logic to figure out the fringe conservative’s beliefs.
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
So… was she removing it because she strongly supports laws against posting on telephone poles?
Or because she disagrees with the point of view expressed?
If it’s the latter, while she doesn’t deserve to be assaulted, I certainly have a problem with her actions.
Plus there’s the added ironic twist of using this image, given that so many of the John Birthers out there constantly decry the moral depravity of Hollywood.
Why is it always the white guys who are screaming about their rights when no one is oppressing them? Lord, help my people.
Well, if you consider the Obama-Joker image with the word ‘Fascism’ on it to be slander, (“words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another”), then I would think she’s well within her rights –and not trampling the rights of anyone else– to remove the poster.
Fascism. “A radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology.” (Wikipedia)
The Health Care ‘Public Option’ is plainly anti-corporatist, as it diminishes private corporate power over our health care. Health Care and Education being two foundational elements of actual Democracy.
Bush’s regime was far closer to actual fascism… right up to the Whitehouse! : Cheney left the CEO position of Halliburton to become VPOTUS, then Halliburton gets no-bid contracts for logistics work in Iraq. If that isn’t simultaneously radical, authoritarian and corporatist, then I need my ‘nads waxed.
Witness the violence inherent in the system!
“Police took the Obama poster as evidence in the assault.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOku…
I sort of feel like these posters, given the current climate, are akin to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.
If the woman disagrees with the sentiment and takes the poster down, there is no problem with that. The maker of the poster exercised his free speech and put it up. Isn’t she exercising her free speech, sort of, by taking it down?
Free speech isn’t a blank check. Violation of free speech rights may have occurred if it were the police or local government that took the thing down, but this was just another citizen who’s disgusted with this lame rhetoric. Kudos to her, and WTF to the guy who would beat up a neighbor in front of his kid.
jeez offended lady and repressed dude;
“Y SO SRS?”
@ 9 is right on all counts.
@10 lighten up
Welcome to a world that DJ’s, band members, and promoters have long a part of. They thing they’re arguing about principal, but it’s really about turf.
“think”, ehem.
@9: Remember that when someone takes down your pro-gay-marriage or anti-war signs.
Ironic that you want to take away someone’s right to call someone a Fascist.
Why do they hate recycling so?
@15,
That woman had as much right to take down the sign as the guy had to put it up. If someone takes down your sign, put it back up again, you fucking baby.
You have to take pity on right wingers. They have no brains and they elected Bush. Imagine their surprise when Bush practically destroyed the entire country. Even though it was evident to so many he was a LOSER, the right wing loved him. So now they’re jealous that Obama is succeeding in saving the country and it must be killing them. And all their non-sense about deficits, well it’s just that when you consider it was Bush who said they didn’t matter and ran them up like crazy for a war we didn’t need.
@15: The poster went up, so he said it. I’m sure people saw it. @17 has it.
I should add that I think that if the poster had been in his own yard, it should have been off-limits for tearing down (as some people have done with anti-war signs).
At any rate, if I wanted to “take away someone’s right” to do anything, I would, OBVIOUSLY, get a bunch of people to sign something and wait with bated breath to see if I could thence get a referendum on the ballot.
Lady, I live in on 135th and Linden, and I got your back. In fact, I am going to stroll down there right now and see if I can find anymore signs to tear down. This neighborhood- scratch that- this STREET Linden Ave has gotten terrible over the years.
She’s no better than a screaming teabagger. She should’ve put up her own poster in response, not torn down the offending one.
Story sounds like horseshit to me.
gawd, this would have been so much better if all involved were juggalos, including the kid in the stroller and the cop and that they were fighting over the veracity of obama/joker in their juggalo canon.
@15, If someone is going to call someone fascist at least know what the f*ck you’re talking about and use the term correctly.
And yes, that goes for knee-jerk left-wingers too, who have been the worst offenders, IMHLiberalO.
Telephone poles are public spaces. Put ’em up, take ’em down, its a dialogue. Etc., etc.
Don’t all these posters have the word “socialist” printed under them?
Wasn’t The Joker an anarchist?
You’re fooling yourself.
“Plus there’s the added ironic twist of using this image, given that so many of the John Birthers out there constantly decry the moral depravity of Hollywood.”
You’re forgetting the younger pseudo-libertarian “South Park Republicans”. Much more smarmy, not much smarter than the olds and the bitters, though.
The message I get from these posters (to take a slightly less reasoned page from Charles Mudede’s book[s]) is not that the Joker is an anarchist, but that he is the quintessential American bad guy. It is not as simple as political differences or even religious differences; but has now been reduced to a binary: Good vs. evil. The message, then, recalls Batman’s license to do whatever it took, anything at all, to stop the Joker because, well, he’s the goddamn Batman. It’s not even about known what -ism is what anymore – this is a call to destroy that which destroys, regardless of its reason for destruction or the means necessary to destroy it.
Like the Joker, the bad guy here helpfully taunts the good guy, just so he can get good and het up about it.
As I said, “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.
@2: Didn’t you hear? It’s an anarcho-syndicalist commune.
@Spangenthal-Lee: I don’t think that’s the type of anarchism favored by the Joker.
Slog only identifies the race of suspects if they are white.
This did not happen. There are no bad neighborhoods on the northend.
Sounds like we need to get these two together and sit them down with Obama and discuss the issue? It worked for the MIT Prof and the Cop….