HEAD-TOO-BIG-GATE!!!

There's a story at Fox Nation right now titled "Creepiest Obama Story Yet Just Got Creepier." Really? We're being told something is the "creepiest Obama story yet" by Fox? It's got to be staggeringly creepy! What's the story?

The story (via American Thinker) is this:

Rick Moran called the hanging of a huge Barack Obama portrait at the US Embassy in London the "Creepiest Obama story yet" yesterday. But it gets worse. Check out the size and placement (hat tip: Weasel Zippers) of the portrait, a tapestry by renowned Chuck Close, a government-approved (National Medal of Arts winner) artist. Ladies and gentlemen, we are well into Dear Leader territory:

Following along so far? There's a large portrait of the president by Chuck Close -- one of the best living portraitists in the world. But because he's won a National Medal of Arts, he's a "government-approved" artist. And because the portrait has been hung at our embassy in London, and Obama's head is bigger than the heads of nearby photos (because, y'know, that's Chuck Close's style), this is morally equivalent to something one of the Kims would do in the totalitarian hellscape of North Korea.

This became a brouhaha on the right over the weekend, when Twitchy posted this:

The newly installed tapestry of President Obama casts a warm smile over guests at an event @USAinUK last night. pic.twitter.com/tYKwyXcDIA

— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) December 13, 2013

and this (photo credit: U.S. Embassy, London):





That, by the way, is the same embassy outside which you'll find this Ronald Reagan statue, unveiled in 2011:





Here's the whole thing:





Yeah, nothing creepy about that.

So why do right-wingers think this sory has become "even creepier"?

Here's the kicker:

"The tapestry is one of 10 that will be made available for sale (at $100,000 each) as part of a fundraiser supporting the Obama Victory Fund." [italics in original]

That's right: our Embassy to the United Kingdom is displaying a propaganda portrait created for the purpose of raising a million dollars to propel President Obama to a second term.

Um, no -- our Embassy to the United Kingdom is displaying a portrait made by a serious artist. Yes, he made ten such tapestry portraits and sold them to benefit Obama. But this is his art. It's not something you wheat-paste on a wall.

That Reagan statue? That was connected to a campaign, too -- the permanent campaign, on both sides of the Atlantic, to sell conservatism as the ideology to which (as Margaret Thatcher would have put it) there is no alternative. Here's some information about that statue:





"The Conservative Way" is actually the Conservative Way Forward, which, according to The Telegraph, was described by Prime Minister David Cameron "as the largest and most effective pressure group within the Tory party." The statue is clearly part of Reagan/Thatcherism's ongoing propaganda efforts. No complaints from the right about that.