Politics

Tea Party Agitprop

Images of the anti-Obama T-shirts and posters from this month’s Tea Party protest in Washington.

The painter John McNaughton makes his living mostly with Norman Rockwell-esque landscapes and religious scenes. But on Sept. 7, he released The Forgotten Man, which portrays President Obama looking smug and trampling the Constitution, and it was an instant sensation. Below Obama, dollar bills and ignored legislation flutter with the wind. Beside him, a forlorn and impoverished man sulks on a bench. And behind him, his 42 presidential predecessors react to the scene, with progressives like Teddy Roosevelt rejoicing and Tea Party favorites like Abraham Lincoln recoiling. McNaughton’s political art—before The Forgotten Man, he painted One Nation Under God, which portrays Jesus showing the Constitution to a small boy—has a clear conservative view. He might even be considered the official artist of the Tea Party, even though he says he has never attended a Tea Party event. No matter: Tea Party activists are pretty good at making their own art. At the Tea Party’s 9/12 rally on the National Mall a few weeks ago, there was anti-Obama propaganda on posters, T-shirts, and even a cell-phone case.

Click here to launch a slide show of the anti-Obama propaganda at the Tea Party rally on Sept. 12.

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