Reply #49: Uh, there IS a record. There are posters, and it's noted in a BOOK.

[MADem]

Oooops...

....missed the one that Obama's is most directly compared with-- McGovern's "Here comes the Sun" '72 campaign logo that was put on his campaign posters. You can view the image in black and white. This is from a PDF I have about McGovern's campaign, but I've also come across it in a book about the campaign. Posters were huge in the McGovern campaign. They distributed over a million of them, so there must be some of these in color still around. But you can bet that McGovern's posters didn't stick to the red-white-blue mantra.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/28/62811/6923



NOT CONVINCED? Well, let's turn to NEWSWEEK, where an Obama supporter/blogger wrongly predicted in FEB that this would become a great big issue: http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/02.aspx

Obama's Logo Is Feeling Groovy
Andrew Romano | Feb 28, 2008 11:26 AM
During our conservation yesterday about the intricacies of Barack Obama's unprecedented branding effort, I asked graphic design expert Michael Bierut whether any other presidential campaign had ever "pulled a Nike"--i.e., created a logo that carried the campaign's message without mentioning the candidate's name. His answer? "It's been a long time." But Bierut never expanded on this initial reaction, launching instead into an analysis of George W. Bush's 2000 bid, which relied on a "W" in a similar (if less sophisticated) way. So I cut it from the transcript.

Stupid me. As it turns out, there is, in fact, another "Nike" logo on the books--and it bears a striking resemblance to Obama's. Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on this 1972 poster for presidential candidate George McGovern (hat tip to Jerome Armstrong):


....Just wait 'til Hillary Clinton gets her mitts on this. Of course, Obama is a "new day" type of candidate--much like McGovern was--so the rising sun imagery is probably more coincidental than referential. And because it's based on something organic--his initial--Obama's logo is definitely an improvement over his predecessor's. But now that the whole Deval Patrick "plagiarism" gambit is petering out, Sen. Clinton is probably on the hunt for another line of attack. Enter good old George. What better way to sink Obama among conventionalist working-class whites in Ohio and Texas, Mark Penn will mutter, than by accusing him of swiping from McGovern? I can hear it now: Are we ready to watch another anti-war "movement" candidate ride the support of young voters to a crushing 22-point loss? I mean, look at that groovy logo!



If you don't feel like a little bit of a jerk, you really should. It's not that big a deal, but you were pretty fucking quick with the gratuitous snark, and it turns out, you were DEAD WRONG.