Today I received an e-mail that I found highly offensive. The subject line was "If Obama wins!" There was no text, just seven images that seemed to be an attempt to show what would happen if Obama was elected in November. The images used come from a contest titled "What if the US Loses" hosted by www.worth1000.com. The contest took place in December 2002, long before Obama was even mentioned as a presidential candidate.
Yet these images have been pulled as-is from the website and circulated to show the horrors of a possible Obama presidency. So we are being offered the equation "What If the US Loses?" = "Obama Wins"
I'm not going to include any of the images here, but you can follow the link below to see them on the contest page - and in their original context.
The title of the contest was What if the US Loses? This link will bring you to the contest entries. There were 26 total, the e-mail currently circulating uses seven of those images.
The rules of the contest were:
In this contest your task is to depict American culture as it will look should Iraq (or any militant Islamic group) win in a war against the USA. Would dollar bills praise Allah? Will Mr. Rogers wear a turban? Would the models in Playboy magazine wear veils, as in Bashturn's themepost? Let's find out. Just a note, that you should be respectful of the Islamic culture in this contest. You're task is to depict the results of two different cultures combined - not to poke fun at it.
The rules of this game are thus: Create an image that depicts a world in which America has lost the war against Iraq (or any other militant Islamic group). What would happen to our combined cultures? As always, quality is a must. We will remove poor entries no matter how much we like you. You'll have 48 hours for this contest, so make your submission count.
When looked at in conjunction with the rules of the contest, some of the submitted images are clever. However, when placed in the context of "this is what will happen if we let Obama win," the effect on the viewer is completely different. It plays into the Obama is a Muslim meme, or even the Manchurian candidate meme.
The images in the e-mail are obviously meant to equate Obama with "a militant Islamic group."
The sender is like me an immigrant to the U.S. She's Malaysian, I'm Irish. This e-mail follows on the heels of an offensive anti-immigrant e-mail that she forwarded last week. Why I mention that she's an immigrant is that I would think she should be more sensitive to issues of race and immigration than she appears to be. I'm not sure whether to bite my tongue or express my disgust.
What would you do? Would you be offended? How would you react?