ABSTRACT
Obama as Nazi; Obama as socialist; Obama as fascist; Obama as communist; Obama as African witch doctor; Obama as Muslim (as if this were evil in itself)— these were the messages pouring out of the reviling images that greeted us daily on the cable and network news, especially during the first two years of Obama’s presidency. News commentators expressed their perplexity at the multiple and sometimes mutually exclusive images of the President drawn in kaleidoscopic fashion by his right-wing adversaries in their campaign to defeat his health-care and other proposals. Perplexing they were, those placards with their searing images-those myths-in-the-making-but from a semiological perspective, they made perfect sense, even if they lacked the imprimatur of more orthodox, timeseasoned American myths.
