The left is howling with indignation over a poster depicting Barack Obama as the villainous Joker character from The Dark Knight Batman movie. The poster, by an anonymous artist, has popped up in Los Angeles and Atlanta. The word “socialism” appears under the president’s PhotoShopped face.

“Don’t they know rule number five from Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: ‘ridicule is man’s most potent weapon’? Interesting how mad they get when you use their rules against them, isn’t it?” Glenn Beck said on his TV show yesterday. (segment begins at 5:20 on linked video)

The posters have some liberals furious. For example, Steven Mikulan of LA Weekly writes:

The poster, which bears a very superficial resemblance to Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama Hope illustration, has been pasted on freeway supports and other public surfaces. It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like [actor Heath] Ledger’s Joker’s) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word “Socialism” appears below his face. The only thing missing is a noose.

Of course the left cheered and cackled when President Bush was depicted as the Joker in Vanity Fair last summer.

Mikulan’s own publication previously ran a poster on its cover depicting then-President Bush as a vampire. The artist? Shepard Fairey, creator of the iconic Obama “Hope” poster.