The Work of Anti-Hillary Art in the Age of Social Media
The U.K. Independent reports that almost immediately upon Hillary Clinton announcing her presidential campaign the hashtag #WhyImNotVotingforHillary became the top trending topic on Twitter. It's still going strong; you can check it out here.
The hashtag was the work of Markeece Young, a former Democrat turned Republican who tweets @YoungBLKRepub.
Most of the tweets are dumb and filled with recycled jokes, cartoons, and '90s-era gags about Slick Willie, Monica Lewinsky, and the like. Benghazi is a popular topic, as is email-gate, Mrs. Clinton's vast wealth, and her generally disastrous run as Secretary of State.
Cosmopolitan has rounded up a host of true knuckle-dragging misogynist tweets about the former First Laday and senator from New York.
Clinton may be the first candidate who will face campaigning in the social-media era with lots and lots of scandals in her past. Some of those "scandals" are phony outrages and others are legitimate issues that will be resurrected and pored over again and again and again. The difference now, I'd argue, is that a host of technologies allow people more than ever to keep things alive. That may well work to Clinton's favor, especially if the most deranged critics of Clinton become so visible and so outspoken that all her political adversaries have to work to distance themselves from anything resembling such attacks.
And the same sorts of social media and messaging technologies that let wingnuts and moonbats of all persuasions rip on everybody about everything all the time also allows for some genuinely smart commentary, too. The image to the upper right was photographed in Brooklyn and posted by an unknown artist. It mocks the attempt by the HRC Super Volunteers to demonize critics as illegitimate if they call Clinton polarizing, ambitious, inevitable, secretive, and other terms that are well within anybody's sense of acceptable discourse. There's more examples of this street art at The Weekly Standard.
The poster is highly reminscent of Robbie Canal's anti-Reagan (and right-wingers more generally) art from the late 1980s and '90s. Shephard Fairey's iconography was a boost to President Obama's campaign in 2008. It may well turn out that some well-turned anti-Hillary posters—not to mention ones attacking the various GOP hopefuls—will have an influence over the next year and a half of insufferable Laff Olympics we call political campaigns. This is much is certain at least: Images, videos, and other messages mocking and praising candidates will be be more easily circulated than ever before.
Take it away, Obama Kids Sing for Change (Pyongyang Remix):