Todd Stadler's blog

A political foray (a poster for John McCain)

I rarely discuss politics (these days) on this blog, for the reason that I know almost nothing about politics. Sort of.

It's not that I don't care about politics — relative to the general population, I consider myself fairly wonky, and I probably read more political coverage than is good for me.

No, I like politics, but I have nothing original to say about it — I certainly don't know any more than most other people out there. I read the same blogs people with my political leanings do, and anything I could write would largely be a rehashing of the content of those blogs, along with what paltry analysis I could throw on top of it.

There's not much value in my blogging such things for the world to read. (Unlike, say, this stream-of-consciousness bit of navel-gazing, which I'm sure is pure joy for you — as always, the real reason I started typing this entry will appear in the final few sentences, some twenty paragraphs in.)

Complicating the matter of my political knowledge is that most of the sources (blogs) I read are clearly biased. Now, I prefer a point of view that is honest about its bias rather than one that hides it, but it still means that I'm never sure of anything that I've read — is it a frank appraisal of things in contrast to other sources' spin, or is it merely a piece designed to sway me to one candidate or party, regardless of the truth? I don't necessarily mind reading the latter, but I'd hate to have it inform my overall opinion.

Perhaps more key to why I eschew political blogging is that I rarely feel like I truly support any given candidate, much less any given party. I'm an evangelical Lutheran with left-wing ideals but I am suspicious of big government — in short, I am nobody's base. I'll vote for people, of course, but rare (or possibly nonexistent) is the person that has my unwavering support. So it is that I find it easier to criticize candidates than to praise them.

Fig. A: On the good ship agitprop

To get to the point, several months ago, I started seeing posters for Barack Obama that were highly stylized and bore only the word "hope". I've since asked around and found that I'm the only person I know who has seen these posters. I'm not sure why, though it probably doesn't hurt that I live fifteen blocks from Obama's Oregon state headquarters.

Anyhow, this particular poster was made by Shepard Fairey, whose name will ring a bell with some but, for others, will prompt the question "Shepard Fairey? Really? That's his name?"

You can read his Wikipedia entry to learn more about him, but, in short, he's the guy famous for the "Andre the Giant has a posse" stickers seen all over the backs of urban stop signs. This later morphed into a whole line of work involving a highly stylized picture of Andre the Giant and the words "obey" and "giant" (the two words that form Fairey's domain name).

But that's not important. The point is that Fairey offered to make a poster for the Obama campaign, and, to his surprise, they accepted. Like most of his work, the Obama poster he made flirts openly with design themes from totalitarian posters of the past.

It also, like much of Obama's campaign (okay, like anyone's campaign), relies heavily on so much pabulum: a picture of Obama gazing thoughtfully into the future, and a promise of "hope" or "change" or "progress" or "free kittens" (er, strike that last one). Do you like hope? Vote for this guy!

Yeah, if I vote for Obama, it won't be for such vague concepts, much less for their depiction by hip, ironic artists, especially when they are depicted, ironically, with such an utter lack of irony. Sorry. (I mean, I'm sorry about that sentence, as well as the likely abuse of the concept of irony. No, I still haven't gotten to the point yet.)

The point (maybe?): what I wanted was not some fawning "Obama=Hope" poster, but rather an image critical of something, one more in line with my sentiments.

Fig. B: Agitprop, agitprop, oh lolly agitprop!

And, in keeping with the "cheap potshot" mentality, I also decided to make an obvious riff on Fairey's "Hope" poster by taking a news photo, tracing it in Illustrator, and thinking of one word to describe the person in the poster.

Thus, my John McCain "fear" poster (see what I did there — it's in contrast to "hope", right, and ... I know. It's dumb).

I don't know if Obama really embodies the idea of hope, but I do think that McCain is campaigning pretty heavily on fear — fear of terrorists, fear of Iran, fear that Obama may not be experienced enough, fear of free kittens, and so on. Are you scared? John McCain will be there for you!

But I'm tired of politicians campaigning on fear. We've had that for six years now, and all we've learned from it is that scared people make some really horrible decisions ("I don't care if you put a chip in my neck and restrict where I can travel and torture certain people that look guilty anyhow, just keep me safe! Oh, George Bush, hold me tight!").

I'll admit, it's not difficult to find a photo of McCain that looks like he's modeling for the concept of fear. In addition, playing with Fairey's palette with bright red patches really plays up the anger in McCain's glare.

Anyhow, there you go. I made a hack political poster based on another hack political poster, and I told you about it in several thousand words. How clever of me.

If you want to print out one for yourself (oh, I know you're really tempted) on letter-sized paper, I made a PDF of the poster.

[Update] Okay, in light of the comments about t-shirts below, I have added the design to my Cafepress store, so you can buy a shirt with the "fear" image if you want. I think it looks particularly nice in black. Have fun.