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Last week, we told you about a Grand Junction billboard depicting Barack Obama as gay, a terrorist, a gangster and a Mexican bandit. The slogan over these caricatures read “Vote DemocRAT. Join the game.”
The placard, which stirred controversy nationwide, has now been taken down — and this morning, Paul Snover, the artist who created it, portrayed its removal as a loss for free speech.
On KOA radio this morning, Snover talked about the billboard as a way to share his work and lamented its dismantling. He also complained about the state of cartooning in America, mentioning one artist he said had to move to Cuba in order to escape brickbats in the States, and compared his situation to that of California’s Enrique Chagoya, whose multi-paneled work “The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals” was allegedly attacked with a crowbar by a Montana woman offended by one section that appears to show Jesus receiving oral sex.
While Snover stressed that he didn’t agree with the message conveyed in the image, he felt Chagoya had every bit as much of a right as he did to express himself artistically — and he doesn’t think it’s right that people should want to destroy the pieces in question.
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Page down to see a video of the anti-Obama billboard:
More from our News archive about a pro-birther billboard that stirred controversy in Denver last year: “Phil Wolf thrilled with response to anti-Obama billboard.”
