OBEY

Kyle Smith, in a piece about New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo, NY City Mayor Bill deBlasio and Barack Obama, uses an illusion that I'll paraphrase here:

Shepard Fairey, is an artist who, more than any other media or entertainment celebrity, made Barack Obama into an icon. His HOPE painting—you know, the one with a posterized image of Obama in red, white, and blue, staring off into space—appeared endlessly in the run-up to this president's first election.

It's interesting to note that Fairey became famous much earlier for a poster that is sometimes referred to as "Obey Giant."

It's ironic, and in a strange way mildly prescient, that the word OBEY plays a big role in the popularity of the poster.

Today, many years after the OBEY poster emerged, we have an administration that is acting as if it must be obeyed. It insists that those who disagree to bend to a big-government ideology that promotes spending, debt, and dependency are somehow extremists who need to be punished. Those who disagree haven't "obeyed," and as a frightening consequence, are increasingly set upon by powerful government agencies.

In what is a scandal that is significantly more serious than Watergate, the IRS targeted tea party groups who did not obey the president's ideology during the 2012 election cycle. Most objective observes now admit that the intimidation program emanated from Washington (not Cincinnati as the administration claimed), but the administration's stone-walling and all-to-convenient media disinterest has kept details murky. More recently, a group of conservative Hollywood types (yes, they do exist) have been targeted in the same way.

In a frightening escalation, the latest instance of government intimidation of those who don't OBEY has moved from groups to individuals. Consider the case of a conservative academic and film-maker, Dinesh DeSousa, a soft-spoken, brilliant social commentator who made the surprise hit film last year entitled, 2016. It's a hard look at Barack Obama, his background, his extreme ideology, and the people, places, and occurrences that shaped the man. It predicts how Obama's presidency will change this nation and what we'll be like in 2016. It received almost no mention by Obama's trained media hamsters and yet drew extremely large audiences for a documentary film.

Last week, Obama's justice department alleged that DeSousa made illegal campaign contributions of $20,000 to the loser of the recent NY Senate race and indicted DeSousa on felony charges. Assuming that the charges are correct, similar instances happen quite frequently (even, gasp, to Democrats). In fact, there is copious evidence that the Obama campaign received illegal contributions in both 2008 and 2012. Yet, no criminal charges were brought and no prosecution was initiated.

Obama supporters argue that the justice department action is coincidental. Really ... they do.

DeSousa's contribution did not affect the outcome of the senatorial election (his candidate lost), they were quite small, and they were made by an individual to a college friend. And yet, criminal charges. Sure, that's just a coincidence.

Those on the Left hyperventilate when they (correctly, I might add) criticize the abuses and intimidation that occurred during the McCarthy era. As the months pass, the escalating actions of the Obama administration have a distinctly McCarthyesque feel to them. But the IRS scandal? Crickets. DeSousa? Still more crickets. Hmmm. I guess it's all about who is being intimidated, isn't it?

Kyle Smith comments:

As President Obama put it (in the process of urging Latinos to think along these lines), “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends.”

The Shepard Fairey poster that turned out to be most apposite to how things would work in the new liberal wonderland was not the one of a serene President Obama captioned, “HOPE.” It was the one of a glowering wrestler captioned, “OBEY.”

But no worries. There's nothing to worry about as long as you OBEY.