THE 2008 ELECTION

“OLD MEDIA” was Barry Blitt’s title for an
image of a suspender-wearing Larry King and
Republican candidate John McCain, both nod-
ding off (opposite). (King retired two years later,
“hanging up his suspenders.”) Blitt tried a variant in which a younger viewer—and his
dog—have also been put to sleep (left). The images brought up concerns about ageism,
as did Blitt’s other sketch (above), which showed McCain following the debate between
Clinton and Obama from the comfort of his retirement home–issue easy chair.

BY THE SPRING OF 2008, the
battle for the Democratic nomination had
narrowed down to a contest between
Hillary Clinton, the party front-runner,
and Barack Hussein Obama, a young and
relatively inexperienced African American
politician from Chicago. As Obama con-
tinued his string of electoral and fund-
raising successes, Clinton shifted her
attacks from Obama’s inexperience to his
lack of “electability.” Clinton’s ostensible
argument was that Obama couldn’t beat a
Republican because of his naïveté, but the
media was also rife with mentions of the
“Bradley effect” (a reference to the dis-
crepancy between voters’ intentions and
their actual votes in the case of nonwhite
vs. white candidates). I talked to Mark
Ulriksen about an image of Hillary paint-
ing blackface on Obama while McCain
contentedly looks on (right), but one
glance at the sketch showed it oversim-
plifed nuanced and complex issues with-
out going to the heart of the matter. I
kept encouraging artists to jot down and
submit more ideas.

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