Poster Showing President Obama as "Joker" (KTLA-TV)
LOS ANGELES -- A poster showing President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger's "Joker" character from "The Dark Knight" is creating a stir on the streets of Los Angeles where the image began appearing over the weekend.
The Obama-Joker poster shows President Obama with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick and also has the word "socialism" printed in bold, dark letters under the image of his face.
It's unclear who created the image and who is posting it across the city. No one has taken credit so far.
Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous.
Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.
"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."
The poster has also gone viral online, crashing the website that first posted images of it and rising to the top of Google's "Today's Hot Trends