by James Oliphant
At HillaryClinton.com, they're selling a new power poster of the candidate.
Check it out for yourself:
Hmm. Does this poster, maybe, look familiar to you? Something's bothering us. . .can't quite place it. . .wait, don't say it. . . .
Oh . . . yeah:
But despite the similarity, the Clinton poster was not created by some Communist Party apparatchik, but by a Hollywood screenwriter. (We've taken you this far, you can supply your own joke here.)
He's identified by the website as the writer of "Eraser."* Yes, it really does say that.
His name? Tony Puryear. And he says of the poster:
Senator Clinton is a beautiful, strong and inspiring woman, and I wanted to make a poster that reflected that. Rather than putting a slogan on the poster, I chose to put her name, because she is surely the only leader at this level with whom we are all on a first-name basis, and to me, that reflects her personal warmth and connection with ordinary Americans.
Yes, nothing says personal warmth and connection like a Red Chinese dictator. But we kid. Kind of. And we're a little scared.
But to be fair, maybe the Chairman wasn't what Puryear had in mind at all. Perhaps his inspiration was more in the manner of:
* Review of "Eraser" from amazon.com: "Eraser is a live-action cartoon, the kind of movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger can survive nail bombs, hails of bullets, an attack by voracious alligators ("You're luggage," he says, after killing one of the beasts), and still emerge from the mayhem relatively intact."
Sounds like a certain hard-to-kill candidate we know.
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Comments
Oh man, this has been bothering me for three weeks, when I first saw them at her rallies in Pennsylvania. I thought they were a response to Fairey's "social realism" Obama poster, thought they were an inside joke that nobody was getting... turns out, it was another case of "absent sender." Just supposed to be a pretty picture. Disappointing!
Posted by: Tara K | May 16, 2008 1:27 PM
Actually, it's a pretty cool poster. Obama's got quite a few cool posters of Himself as well. I don't get what the writer is griping about.
Posted by: Bemused | May 16, 2008 1:30 PM
Did the author of this trash stop to ask the question, Did perhaps the Chairman Mao graphics artists "borrow" this style or did they come up with it originally? Many people would be suprised to know this style is nearly 1800 years old.
Posted by: common cents | May 16, 2008 1:44 PM
Wow.
Posted by: In the bag for Obama, oh corporate media? | May 16, 2008 1:49 PM
It is an old style. When I first saw the Hillary poster, I thought of the Japanese Rising Sun flags used during WWII.
Posted by: DaveB | May 16, 2008 1:53 PM
Hollyweird screenwriter, socialist, Marxist, Clintonista all pretty much the same thing.
Posted by: John D | May 16, 2008 3:00 PM
Go, Senator Clinton, you are a credit to, er.., the Democratic Party, yourself !!!?? I really don't know, now!! The Republican Party!! It is just too close to call !!! Have a great campaign, Senator Clinton, maybe you can join Senator Lieberman, or how about Senator " Questionable Conduct " McCain ??!!! I'm sure somebody still believes in you !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, Chicago | May 16, 2008 3:11 PM
Right on DaveB... reminds me of the Japanese "meatball" emblem... except it's her head in the middle of the rays instead of the meatball. Hmmm.
Posted by: Irene | May 16, 2008 3:11 PM
The Hillary Clinton campaign is a cult of personality just as there was for Mao during the cultural revolution.
Posted by: No Clintonist | May 16, 2008 3:25 PM
Hillary looks fantastic, doesnt she?
Posted by: brigitte | May 16, 2008 4:36 PM
Go, Senator Clinton, you are a credit to, er.., the Democratic Party, yourself !!!?? I really don't know, now!! The Republican Party!! It is just too close to call !!! Have a great campaign, Senator Clinton, maybe you can join Senator Lieberman, or how about Senator " Questionable Conduct " McCain ??!!! I'm sure somebody still believes in you !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, Chicago | May 16, 2008 4:53 PM
"Selling"? In a couple weeks they won't be able to give them away!
Posted by: Danny C | May 16, 2008 8:08 PM
Oh please....don't be foolish. This poster is AWESOME!!! Its a great pic of her, and the design is fantastic and cool!!! Get a grip people.
Posted by: Amber | May 16, 2008 9:11 PM
Looks like Big Brother in 1984. I guess that 1984 fake commerical with Hillary talking and Apple Computer Hammer was dead on.
Posted by: Buckley | May 16, 2008 11:08 PM
In that pic, Hillary is perpetually 41. I prefer an older candidate.
Posted by: Kevin Hayden | May 17, 2008 12:04 AM
I'm an Obama supporter, but seriously, the Hillary poster is cool. And if you have a problem with the Marxist/Socialist style, then also post a criticism of Obama's similar poster. Frankly its just the Clinton campaign copying his version because they realize that, despite your stupid opinion, its a cool style that reflects youthfulness.
Posted by: John | May 17, 2008 12:33 AM
Looks close to identical to the Obama poster for sale. Since I can't paste the graphic here, maybe Swamp will mermit the link.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1241/1221833764_0c00c941f1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/78548168%40N00/1221833764/&h=500&w=377&sz=625&hl=en&start=5&um=1&tbnid=jzlUiko9q8E7TM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=98&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dobama%2Bposter%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ie%3DUTF-8
Posted by: ElliotNC | May 17, 2008 8:52 AM
Study some art history and you'll find that political leaders used the "suns rays coming from the head" routine to project themselves as gods to the people. Academes and leftist elites know this. Hillary and Co. believe she is a god deserving of voter worship. By the way, political figures that used the 'sun rays' were unanimously brutal rulers.
Posted by: Bill | May 17, 2008 9:37 AM
Hmmm, just what I've been saying... she IS a Maoist! When my friend sent me this link, I thought it was a joke -- but it's not. Kinda funny how all the left-wing socilists all think the same way, isn't it?!
Posted by: Marsh | May 17, 2008 10:26 AM
Awesome. Beautiful. Strong. Inspirational. Heroic. A LEADER! Go Hillary. We are with you. Millions and Millions of supporters who will not abandon you just as you have never abandoned us.
Posted by: jd | May 17, 2008 12:18 PM
You're way, way off. Mao? Try Googling up some images of Evita posters. More to the point, there are many more comparisons that can be made between Eva Peron and Hillary than of Hillary and Mao tse-Tung.
Posted by: Mark Gisleson | May 17, 2008 12:37 PM
Reading some of the posts by small minded Hillary loons, you can fool some of the people some of the time but....ah, forget it. You know what I mean. To them the Clinton years never existed.
Posted by: Smokehouse | May 17, 2008 4:48 PM
What's really pathetic is that her supporters actually buy into this dietification.
When anyone starts putting anyone --especially politicians--on this revered level you need to stop and get a life. They are at best benign parasites.
Scarier still is that the candidates don't put a stop to this. Talk about narcissistic. Thank god she's gone for at least the next four yearsand with a little luck for good.
Posted by: patrick | May 17, 2008 5:00 PM
Dims are all closet commies. That's why the images of their leaders all look iconic and how we want to remember them. It's all about idol worship, cult of personality BS.
Posted by: dave | May 17, 2008 6:08 PM
"Sounds like a certain hard-to-kill candidate we know."
hmm. hard-to-kill...because people are voting for her? god forbid!
and for the record: calling clinton a communist because of a picture is just as bad as calling obama a muslim because of a picture. (and there's nothing wrong with being either a communist or a muslim, anyway!) you're a disgusting hypocrite.
Posted by: hillary '08 | May 17, 2008 8:33 PM
The Democrats sometimes make it too easy for their Republican foes to marginalize them. It reminds me of the poster the Obama campaign put out a few months ago. It made the senator look like Che Guevera.
I think it's great when campaign ad people break away from the usual Red, White, and Blue stuff. Gerald Rafshoon gave Jimmy Carter's candidacy a huge boost in the 1976 campaign when the colors used for signs, posters, bumper stickers, and buttons were white lettering on a green field.
But this design and the Obama/Che design suggest the cult of the personality, Great Leaps Forward, grim cinder block high rises, and May Day parades, not the image either candidate likely wants to project.
Mark Daniels
Posted by: Mark Daniels | May 17, 2008 10:23 PM
Pretty disturbing image. Hillary as Chairman Mao?!
Posted by: Bob | June 2, 2008 2:03 PM
Any connection between the overtly Maoist appearance of this poster and the Shepard Fairey version indicates little understanding of Fairey's work. (Shepard didn't even include his trademark "Obey" in the Obama poster, which is more than I can say for the "obey or be crushed" implicit in the Hillary poster.) For goodness sakes, Hillary even appears to be wearing a Mao jacket! I have more concerns about what this bodes for the future. Will we all be sent to Hillary re-education camps if we don't toe the party line? It is long past the time at which Hillary excuses herself from this charade of being the "voice of the people" and returns to her privileged status, and leaves the real work to those who are the people.
Posted by: Steph | June 2, 2008 11:51 PM