Am I the only one who doesn’t think the History Channel’s Satan looks like Obama? When I saw it, it looked like one of the Sith Lords from SWTOR.
Darth Obama
by John Cole| 56 Comments
This post is in: Post-racial America
by John Cole| 56 Comments
This post is in: Post-racial America
Am I the only one who doesn’t think the History Channel’s Satan looks like Obama? When I saw it, it looked like one of the Sith Lords from SWTOR.
Comments are closed.
Spike
No. SATSQ.
schrodinger's cat
I don’t think he looks like Obama either. Satan needs to go easy with the eye make-up though.
BTW did you find the mustard?
taylormattd
You’re not the only one.
This is now a thing on Facebook.
Wonkette, also: http://wonkette.com/506975/totally-great-the-bible-mini-series-explains-that-barack-obama-is-the-debbil
El Tiburon
Looks like a perfect Photoshop morph of a Sith Lord from Star Trek and Obama.
If you don’t see Obama here then wow.
danimal
And how do we know that Satan (or Obama) isn’t a Sith Lord, hmmmm? If I were a Sith Lord, I’d work on my Jedi Mind Meld skills while commanding the most powerful military available.
Just thinking aloud. Carry on.
John Cole
@schrodinger’s cat: No. The mustard belongs to the ages.
Domino
Isn’t Mark Burnett a christian fundie? Think I remember seeing someone post how he and his wife think that classes that educate children about the bible should be available in every public school.
wmd
Anyone comment on Michelle Shocked apparently joining the Westboro Baptist Church yet?
Spaghetti Lee
Kinda looks like Tony Dungy.
geg6
@Domino:
Mel Gibson Catholics, from what I understand. At least the wife is. She used to play the angel on some stupid CBS show about angels, the name of which I cannot remember, probably because I never watched it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionalist_Catholic
The Thin Black Duke
The problem isn’t that “Satan” allegedly looks like Obama, the problem is that he’s the only person of color in a herd of melanin-deprived, blue-eyed dudes from the Aryan Brotherhood.
Mike in NC
They should have cast “Larry the Cable Guy” as Satan.
schrodinger's cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Well stated.
Chris
Everything IS proceeding as he has foreseen.
::cackling laughter::
Seanly
Umm, it looks like Obama if he got lots of dark side points.
Ash Can
Let’s see — the actor plausibly resembles an older Obama, and is the only darker-skinned cast member in a series about Bible stories which is being produced by people who believe study of the Bible should be compulsory in American public schools.
Nothing about this production passes the sniff test. The History Channel needs to be nuked from orbit for what it’s become.
weaselone
@El Tiburon:
I’m going to have to take your nerd card for that one. Just hand it overly peacefully. Don’t make me call in the Wookie.
@danimal:
Because he hasn’t force choked John Boehner, John McCain, or the Turtle.
kc
Why do they call it “The History Channel?”
YellowJournalism
Luke, I am your Kenyan father.
cat
Uh… Is it to soon in the thread to say who ever thinks Obama and the actor shown in the photo look alike have a hard time telling other minorities apart and what that means about their racial sensitivities?
NCSteve
Looks like someone morphed together photos of Obama and Nimoy.
Anya
It should be called the fiction channel not the History Channel. What a fraud. Also, too, what everyone else said — fuck them for casting a black/brown person as Satan.
Mark B.
@cat: These are probably the same people who think that Chris Tucker and Kevin Hart are the same person.
Ben Franklin
Then there is the substance of Holder’s claim: that the specter of fewer law-enforcement personnel on the job is self-evidently a reason to fret. For the sake of argument, let’s grant that federal prosecutors will indeed handle 2,600 fewer cases in the fiscal year 2013, as one government projection maintains. Far from being endangered, Americans may well find their safety enhanced as a result of this particular cut, as prosecutors must be more selective in whom they target. Maybe in this brave new sequestered world, Justice Department resources will be expended on fewer costly, dangerous follies like the hypervindictive campaign against internet pioneer/genius Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January facing 35 years in prison for the crime of downloading a lot of documents from JSTOR. (Holder has since defended the Swartz crusade as “a good use of prosecutorial discretion.”) Imposing some frugality on prosecutors could be a blessing in disguise.
In an editorial published just before the sequester went into effect, the New York Times identified the Coast Guard’s diminished capacity to carry out drug-interdiction missions as one of the budget cuts’ many supposedly grim consequences. But again, this seems an outcome that’s worth cheering: federal drug prohibition is an obvious, unmitigated disaster, a fact which many national politicians must fully recognize by now but are unwilling to do anything about. So if it takes some unprecedented Washington gridlock and confusion to make a dent in curtailing the massive prohibitionist regime—eh, we should take what we can get. The same logic applies to the cuts affecting the DEA, which will lose $166 million under sequestration. That’s $166 million less with which to raid medical-marijuana dispensaries, spread propaganda, and otherwise enforce drug prohibition. Baby steps.
http://www.vice.com/read/reasons-to-love-the-sequesters-massive-budget-cuts
There’s always the flip-side. Sequestration has it’s bennies.
GoodGuyGreg
Bryan Fischer was going on about this today on the AFR Clown Town Hour – more or less suggesting this was divinely inspired – like no matter how hard they tried, “Satan” always looked like this. Pretty funny stuff.
nellcote
You have to admit the black hoodie is a nice touch.
Djur
@Anya: From the pictures I’ve seen, the actor is pretty light-skinned, too — they had to black him up for the role.
There’s a little bit of a resemblance, depending on the picture. The general proportions of the two men’s faces are similar, and a few features are as well.
What’s interesting is that Satan there has thick, purple-looking lips, which I have noticed is a recurring element of Obama caricature even though he doesn’t have lips like that. I think there’s enough of a resemblance there that the guy can be said to kind of look like a caricature of Obama.
I doubt it was intentional, but the racial politics of the miniseries sound awful.
SFAW
@John Cole:
Sic semper condimentus!
Violet
@John Cole: Check Rosie’s crate or Tunch’s lair or that room that belongs to Zsa Zsa. One of them knows where the mustard’s hidden.
South of I-10
@wmd: That makes me so sad. I was a huge fan, back in the day.
Anya
@Djur: The casting and the darkening of the skin color of the actor just show the producers’ lack of insight into their own racist believes. I bet they believe that they’re good christians who love everyone regardless of skin color or ethnicity.
This is what they said about the claim that the Satan character looks like President Obama:
ETA: from TPM
rda909
@South of I-10: This Michelle Shocked thing has got to be some sort of Andy Kaufman kind of act. Or at least I hope it is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Anya: “who is a fellow Christian”? Which is relevant how? I think the actor looks more like Obama than himself in the pictures at the link.
Fair Economist
I don’t think anybody has trouble telling the actor (in costume) apart from Obama. But there’s definitely a resemblance. He could certainly be Obama’s uncle.
Along with everybody else, I don’t think a passing resemblance between a villain and a political figure is of much import, but having the bad guy be the only non-white in an (anachronistically) Aryan cast is very bad and very revealing.
I miss the old History Channel before they went fundy. These days it seems Sundays is all “Search for Noah’s Ark” nonsense – not just Xtian-slanted documentaries but breathless analyses of biblical stories long known to be just false.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@wmd: and she did it at a show in the Bay Area, too.
SFAW
@Fair Economist:
What are you talking about? Everyone KNOWS that all the good guys in the Bible were blond and blue-eyed, just like Jeebus.
Didn’t you hear all the kids in the show singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in Aramaic?
scav
@The prophet Nostradumbass: well, that’s one way to attempt to restart a career, albeit in a different sub-market. Publicity and the chik-mu-sik gravy train might just chug into view.
Comrade Dread
I didn’t see it until someone pointed it out to me. I’m not going to take offense mainly because I see worse than that every day when I go out to the intertubes to see what the wingnuts are thinking.
The actor who played Samson was black… which… okay, doesn’t help at all, given that Samson was known for getting angry, slacking off, and partying with hookers rather than fulfilling God’s intentions for his life.
Heliopause
As with all the TV stories I’ve seen on this today the focus here is on Obama. Forget Obama for a minute, folks. What does it say about a TV production when most of the characters are pretty and cuacasian-ish except for the one who happens to personify evil and he is played by a middle-easterny, muslimy actor? Sure, you might have expected this out of a 1950s biblical epic, but c’mon, it’s 2013.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t think it was intentional, either. Tweety says Burnett’s an Obama supporter, and it’s not like he and his wife did the make up, but looking at the cast, this seems like kind of a throwback to the pale Jesus movies of the ’70s. Newsweek did an interesting cover a few years back, a twenty something Palestinian with scraggly hair and a scruffy beard over the words “Is this the face of Jesus?” I kinda think it was.
Baud
That is a bad ass looking Satan.
scav
@Heliopause: Mere racism doesn’t bleed even in 2013, while whiney Unchristian Obama supporters has platelets?
Comrade Dread
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Most likely, He was a common looking Middle Eastern man of his day.
Which would mean shorter and darker than typical art depictions, and likely a bit more muscular as he was a craftsman and manual laborer.
Mnemosyne
Probably the only Biblical movie to have an ethnically plausible cast is Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew since he took pains to cast the most Mediterranean-looking people he could find in Italy. The actor who played Jesus was half Spanish and half Italian.
GregB
All us white ‘Merkins need to know is that the anti-Christ is going to be some swarthy ferriner. Most likely A-freekin or perhaps Araby looking.
Nothing like our dear White Jesus.
The Other Chuck
I liked them better when they were The Hitler Channel
Pamela
@The Thin Black Duke: That was my first thought. I think the choice to make Satan a black person, reflects intransigent cultural stereotyping and deep fear. I personally would have Satan resemble Dick Cheney.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Pamela: or Ned Flanders.
ruemara
I can’t be the only black christian who wonders how a saxon wound up being the son of god in palestine. As you can tell, despite my devoutness, I was not a favourite at the VBS.
Pamela
A couple of African American Jehovah Witnesses came to my door, handed me a flyer with Jesus on the cover. Jesus is white as snow, with hair that looks styled and blown dry. It was a weird juxtaposition and made me wonder if it was offensive to the people delivering this message.I guess not :-)
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The husband and wife sound like a really crazy wingnuts. Check this out: MARK BURNETT THE REAL DEVIL Is Messing with ‘The Bible’
It has to be the Onion, right?
Mr Stagger Lee
@Pamela: You should see the one with Moses, he looks like Kenny Rogers.
dr. luba
@kc: Because “The Learning Channel” was taken.
Seriously, how many cable channel names still reflect content? MTV? A&E? Fox News?
pattonbt
Wouldnt the devil look like the epitome of perfection (for the time setting of the play)? The devil would not “look” evil, he’she would “look” pretty (or pious or upstanding or wise, etc.). So you would think they would make the devil look better than Jesus (who should look somewhat like a hippie of the time) and the rest of the cast. The devil wouldnt be scary “looking” at all. It would be a figure that would draw worship easily for superficial reasons.
And I dont care if people take shots at politicians when creating fiction, so if there is a resemblance to Obama, whatever. But given my opinion above on the best way to represent the devil and the fact all the good guys are basically white and the bad guy darker, I think there is something wrong here.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
That’s she’s changed a lot since she toured with Billy Bragg back in the 1980’s.
Annia
Are you all kidding! The lip shape, the liver tone of the lips, the nose with its three separate shapes and round nostrils. Cut and paste some shots from an image search of Obama worried, and there it is – add thirty years and no skin care and there you are.
Given the oddly widespread belief among some groups of chrstians that Obama is literally tthe Antichrist, it can’t be a mistake.
Annia
Are you all kidding! The lip shape, the liver tone of the lips, the nose with its three separate shapes and round nostrils. Cut and paste some shots from an image search of Obama worried, and there it is – add thirty years and no skin care and there you are.
Given the oddly widespread belief among some groups of chrstians that Obama is literally tthe Antichrist, it can’t be a mistake.