BREITBART: The con artists have taken over the asylum

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Can we all agree that the “hope, “change” and “transparency” part of the Barack Obama media carnival is officially over, and it’s finally time that we start holding our new president accountable?

Consider the tale of the ubiquitous “Hope” poster that helped get Mr. Obama worshipped, inoculated and elected — and the anti-capitalist street artist who “created” it.

Shepard Fairey last week was sued for copyright infringement by the Associated Press, which claims he stole photographer Manny Garcia’s work and made it the basis of the iconic off-red, white and blue posters whose signed editions are being sold on eBay for thousands of dollars.

If found guilty — a liberal application of “fair use” law could protect Mr. Fairey — we have a case of the white man stealing from an ethnic minority in order to turn a quick profit. (I thought an Obama presidency would automatically end such practices.)

Chinese, Latin American and former Soviet Communist artists may also have a claim against Mr. Fairey, whose style is brazenly ripped off from the propaganda campaigns of totalitarian states. If regimes that murdered tens of millions of innocent human beings can be so revered and redeemed, can the swastika be reappropriated, too?

Later in the week, Mr. Fairey was arrested en route to his first solo exhibition — aptly called “Supply and Demand” — at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. Apparently, the artist chosen by the current leader of the free world has been arrested 14 times, mainly for “tagging,” which is the art world’s euphemism of choice for graffiti and other forms of defacing private property.

Mr. Fairey’s previous “street art” sensation was “Obey” posters that littered urban America for a good portion of the Bush administration. Mr. Fairey was artistically positioning someone to cleanse the body politic of corruption and cynicism.

“The whole concept of ‘Obey’ was getting people to question their obedience,” Mr. Fairey told Wired magazine.

Yet Mr. Fairey and his fellow artists are now part of a seemingly endless artistic vanguard pledging obedience to their new leader. Those who codified the slogan “dissent is patriotic” now march lockstep with the new president, no matter what he does, and use their elevated place in society to cast an evil eye on those who question his early blunders.

It’s the type of thing George Orwell could have imagined.

And as irony would have it, Mr. Fairey recently designed the cover art for the new Penguin editions of Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Apparently, some artists are more equal than others — and intimidated by, dense to or profiting from the cult of personality that is being created by Hollywood and Madison Avenue and being abetted by the new president himself.

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s celebrity-laden “Presidential Pledge” video is not a “Saturday Night Live” spoof, but the kind of reverence demanded by leaders of totalitarian regimes. During the election cycle, an all-black junior fraternity at the Urban Community Leadership Academy made a similar pledge to Mr. Obama that was viewed millions of times on YouTube.

Yet comedians, usually the artistic canaries in the coal mine, are tragically also pledging their fealty to Mr. Obama.

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