A new Great Seal of Obama scandal?
Detail of background page from BarackObama.com
Image by acaben via Flickr
The Obama Seal Part 2-Screen Capture
The Obama Seal Part 1
Remember last year when candidate Obama’s team put a mocked up presidential seal on his podium at an event, causing an uproar? The seal combined elements of the Presidential Seal with the distinct visual cues of Obama’s campaign graphics and fonts. Critics called it a sign of hubris, arrogance, and entitlement. (This was in June 2008, when the presidential race was far from decided.) It was pulled after one speech, never to be used again.
Well, someone at barackobama.com didn’t get the memo. A few weeks ago I pulled this screenshot from the site, showing a new seal–this time a weird version of the Great Seal of the United States mashed up with the Presidential Seal–the one that says “e pluribus unum” on it. You can only see it for a split second–as the website is loading, it’s the background of the page, but as soon as there’s any content, a white box completely hides the image. It’s almost subliminal in that way, and not, despite the looks of my screen grab, a major design element. Which begs the question, why have it there at all? Though I took several stabs at the screen capture above, to prove it, it was easy enough for me to find the page background graphic in the site’s code. Here it is.
I know this is just a case of an overzealous designer. I’m not a teaparty, birther nutjob. In fact I’ve defended Obama policies several times in my posts on this site and my other writing. I support the president and his goals for the country. (Just feel the need to be clear about that.) But I don’t know why his graphics team gets this wild hair in them, to the point of creating these weird logos. Why mess with the iconography of the nation, stuff that’s been around for hundreds of years? There’s so much great about Obama’s campaign graphics, we really don’t need stylized versions of the official graphics of the nation.
Anyway, make what you will of this. All I see is a graphic designer having a little too much fun, but I think someone should’ve stopped him or her before they hit the publish button. I’m not actually overly protective of seals or iconography or whatever. Any meaning those things have comes from the ideals and aspirations of the nation behind them, not because they’re really pretty or have an eagle or flag shield. After all, that stuff was meaningless until the US came into being.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Paul Smalera, HSmith. HSmith said: A new Great Seal of Obama scandal? – Paul Smalera – Living Through …: Remember last year when candidate Obama.. http://bit.ly/5VbODL [...]
[...] Obama Official Seal Scandal?? 1/1/10 – New Obama Seal?!From Paul Smalera at True/Slant: “Remember last year when candidate Obama’s team put a mocked up presidential seal on his [...]
Birther nutjob? No, the nutjobs are the ones that believe Obama has supplied a birth certificate proving he was born in the USA. Obama is not a natural born citizen because his father was not a citizen. If he was born in Hawaii, that would make him a citizen, not a NBC. He was a British citizen when he was born which gives him dual citizenship and dual allegiance which would disqualify him for president. Also he became a citizen of Indonesia and never applied to get his US citizenship back.
Their are many questions to be answered and Obama/Soetoro is hiding all documentation of his past from the American people.
One man was shot in the head when cooperating with the FBI on the investigation into who accessed Obama’s passport records. Lou Dobbs lost his job for stating that Obama should show his birth certificate. I believe Obama should produce it and stop hiding the truth about who he really is. Obama is a communist and is out to destroy our nation and must be stopped.
Birther nutjobs? I don’t think so. Patriotic Americans that believe in upholding the constitution is what we are. If there is anybody out there that can think of a legitimate reason Obama should be allowed to hide his birth certificate from the American people, let us know because I cannot think of any.