A billboard suggesting similarities between president Barack Obama and Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes has caused a stir in one Idaho town and beyond.
The billboard, located in Caldwell, Idaho, features a picture of Holmes, accompanied with the text “Kills 12 in a movie theater with assault rifle, everyone freaks out.” Juxtaposed is a picture of Obama, with the text: “Kills thousands with foreign policy, wins Nobel Peace Prize.”
The billboard is funded by a group honoring the memory of the late Libertarian thinker Ralph Smeed, the Ohio Statesman reported. According to the group, the billboard is there to remind Americans of Obama’s promise to bring home the troops—a promise the group says has been broken.
“We’re all outraged over that killing in Aurora, Colo., but we’re not outraged over the boys killed in Afghanistan,” said Maurice Clements, a member of the group, which has previously paid to display other anti-Obama messages on the billboard.
Local residents have called the billboard “abhorrent,” but the message remains.
The sentiment expressed on the billboard is similar to a line from The Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger’s Joker observes that no one would panic if he announced a “truck load of soldiers will be blown up” tomorrow, but people would lose their minds if he said a city mayor was going to die.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
