Idaho Billboard Compares Obama To Aurora Shooting Suspect James Holmes
1:16 am - 07/29/2012
An electronic billboard in Caldwell, Idaho that compares President Obama to James Holmes, the 24-year-old man accused of killing 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater on July 20, has sparked outrage in the community, reports The Idaho Statesman.
The giant sign on Franklin Road and North 21st Avenue features a photo of Holmes with the words, "Kills 12 in a movie theater with assault rifle, everyone freaks out," written under his picture, juxtaposed to a photo of Obama with the words, "Kills thousands with foreign policy, wins Nobel Peace Prize," written below.
The billboard often features anti-Obama messages, and is sponsored by The Ralph Smeed Foundation, the supporters of the late activist for libertarian causes in Idaho. Foundation member and former state lawmaker Maurice Clements, told The Idaho Statesman the billboard is a response to Obama's 'broken promise' to bring home the troops.
"We’re all outraged over that killing in Aurora, Colo., but we’re not outraged over the boys killed in Afghanistan,” Clements explained to the paper, and added that he's not trying to connect Obama to Holmes, he's just comparing the way society reacts. "We’re not saying that Obama is a lunatic,” he said.
Regardless of what the billboard is really comparing, the message is not going over well with the area's residents, who are outraged, calling it "offensive," "abhorrent," and "pathetic," reports NBC News.
"This billboard is offensive to all those lives lost and affected by the shooting," wrote Fabiola G. Monrroy on the Facebook page of KBOI-TV, which first reported the story. "Just pathetic, even if this is their expression of the 1st amendment."
Most of the messages on the TV station's Facebook page echo Monrroy's sentiment, and Canyon County Democratic Party communications director Judy Ferro, told the Idaho Press-Tribune that she believes that even the late Ralph Smeed would object to it. “There’s no factual basis to it at all … it’s just offensive," she explained.
Posted: 07/28/2012 2:21 pm Updated: 07/29/2012 12:20 am
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This country, and most others I wager, never had civility when it comes to politics. I think the two words never have even seriously belonged in the same sentence except when lamenting that there is none. Smearing and slandering and dirty politics is as american as apple pie. Only difference now is that the internet makes the smear more widely and quickly spread.
Some fun examples: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/349
One of my favourites, its from 1828: "John Quincy Adams was nicknamed "The Pimp" by the campaign of his opponent General Andrew Jackson, based on a rumour that he had once coerced a young woman into an affair with a Russian nobleman when he had been American ambassador to Russia.
Adams' supporters hit back with a pamphlet which claimed: "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British solders! She afterwards married a mulatto man with whom she had several children of which number General Jackson is one!!" Jackson won anyway. "
This guy DOES know that Bush started it, right? And as I recall, there's been a fuckton of outrage.
And all the Bush started it arguments are asinine. That excuse stopped working for me when I was about 5 and besides there are things he's done that are worse (increased drone strikes for example).
The comparison is very inappropriate, but hey that's the libertarians for you.
But anyway, other than being tactless, this isn't that shocking.
That's my problem with it.
The legacy of America's foreign policy and the destruction it spreads across the world absolutely needs to be addressed, but I don't think the people initiating that conversation will be able to do so without pinning literal centuries of conquest on the first black president of the nation only because he's black and they don't like that. It is frustrating, on multiple levels, when people don't want to address that while he's absolutely at fault for the busted shit he's been doing, this is older and deeper than Obama.
edid: huh, looks like he got it in late 2009. For some reason, I thought it was the previous year, when he was still just the President-elect
Edited at 2012-07-29 08:42 pm (UTC)
My college newspaper's editor asked people on campus to define "Making Statism Unpopular". I don't think anyone knows. You'll have to ask Smeed's ghost.
Judy Ferro was my English teacher, ha.
And the digital billboard is a real downgrade. I miss the old plastic letters.
Nothing they say matters.
also i am highly amused that these people are throwing around the word "statism," as if they have the faintest clue of what it means.
Edited at 2012-07-30 02:18 am (UTC)
He promised to increase troop presence in Afghanistan. Agree or disagree with it, and it is completely valid to disagree with it and be disturbed by it, but don't pretend like he was running as anything but a foreign policy hawk like every other major candidate for president.
There's a lot of shit Obama has done that is horrible and that he needs to be accountable for, but the history of western libertarians and their ties to right-wing militia movements in this country makes me think maybe these guys aren't the ones to be leading that charge. Especially given their little swipe at gun-control proponents in this billboard (I guarantee you they're pissed that the Aurora shooting has revived talk of limiting access to assault weapons, and that's at least one of their reasons for bringing up the fact that Holmes used one).
This is one of the messages they used to have on their billboard. How anybody can think these folks are legitimately angry at American foreign policy and disregard for human life that isn't white and Christian, and not just basic racists pissed off at a black dude in the White House, is beyond me.
Edited at 2012-07-30 03:23 am (UTC)
Ugh. Will the 2016 campaign run purely on internet memes? Good lord, save me..