Does David Corn look like the Joker? Or, for that matter, the man who was regarded by Democrats for eight years as the nation’s arch villain (or at least one of them)—George W. Bush? Rush Limbaugh, for one, sees a striking resemblance.
As David notes over at Politics Daily, Limbaugh was riffing yesterday on the posters that have been cropping up that depict President Obama as the Joker (Heath Ledger’s version, not Jack Nicholson’s). Some see the posters as overtly racist. Not Limbaugh, though. In fact, he thinks Obama and Batman’s nemesis share a great deal in common:
[The Joker] had a big damn chip on his shoulder about his childhood and about a bunch of other things. His goal was to undermine the whole system. . . . And to effect the change that the people of Gotham City didn’t want, the Joker created chaos upon chaos. The whole city was focused on him and what he was going to do next. He viewed crisis as an opportunity. So the Joker orchestrated crisis after crisis after crisis. And the Joker wore a mask. I mean whoever put this poster together is pretty smart because there are some similarities here to what the Joker did in that movie and what Obama is doing to this country.
Limbaugh went on to say that “Obama has admitted to wearing masks,” which, on planet Limbaugh, “is his tactic for fooling white people.” (What was it you were saying again about racism, Rush?) David writes:
After finishing his Obama-as-Joker riff, Limbaugh noted that a previous piece of Joker-inspired political art—a Vanity Fair illustration of George W. Bush as the Ledger character—prompted no popular outrage when it appeared last year. Hypocrisy, he shouted. What’s more, he added, the VF drawing was of low artistic quality.
And here’s where David comes in. According to Limbaugh, “This thing that Vanity Fair ran doesn’t even look like Bush. It looks like David Corn, the guy who used to write for The Nation. On a normal day it looks like David Corn.”
Since I work with David, I can vouch for the fact that the VF caricature does not look like our DC bureau chief on a “regular day.” He only wears his Joker costume once, twice a week max.
Here’s what David had to say about Limbaugh’s slight:
Ouch. But having one’s physical appearance besmirched by Rush Limbaugh is like having one’s moral fiber questioned by . . . well, Rush Limbaugh. (For the record, I now work for Mother Jones, not The Nation.) One stoops to Limbaugh’s gutter level at some peril. But I will say that if a casting director had to choose between Limbaugh and me for someone to play the role of The Penguin, another Batman nemesis, there’s no doubt who would get the nod.
Resemblance?
Follow Daniel Schulman on Twitter, where you can feel free to let him know what Batman character he resembles.
