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Graffiti artist Shepard Fairey’s message was heard loud and clear in the silence of a Sanford, Fla. courtroom during the search of an impartial jury for the George Zimmerman trial. On the first day of jury duty, a Seminole County teen wore one of Fairey’s trendy black caps with the “OBEY” logo known worldwide. When it was his turn to be questioned in the courtroom Thursday, the recent high-school graduate wore an "OBEY" tank top. “I can’t help but see that you have something written on your shirt,” said defense attorney Don West, who looked puzzled in a navy blue...

<p>A Florida teenager could face felony vandalism charges for allegedly gluing posters depicting President Obama as the Joker onto public property, FOXNews.com has learned.</p> <p>Clermont, Fla., Police Capt. Eric Jensen said the state attorney will review evidence to determine whether to charge the unidentified teenager with gluing "dozens" of the posters last week to the city's light poles, public and private buildings, bridge overpasses, road signs and a mailbox.</p>

What do you do if you're a street artist turned marketing phenom who uses other people's images when someone uses one of your designs? If you're Shepard Fairey, apparently, you call your lawyers. Fairey, of Obama HOPE poster fame, is defending himself against charges he infringed on an Associated Press copyrighted photo in making the poster. He's also been criticized by artists for using others' work without attribution. His lawyers claim in the AP case that he is protected by fair use provisions of the copyright law. It turns out, however, that the activist art appropriator is a wee bit...

The liberals who voted Obama into office really are dumb. They think Obama came to them in a peanut butter cookie and told them to sell it on ebay to keep funding change. Excerpt: "Aaron Cather was baking cookies on Monday January 19th, 2009 (exactly 19 hours before inauguration -- coincidence???) when Obama presented himself to Aaron, and the world, in peanut butter cookie form for the first time! This is the cookie in which Barack Obama came to Aaron, after Aaron subconsciously inspired it to take shape in dough as the likeness of the President himself, so that we...

Humility, gratitude and sacrifice. From his first words, Barack Obama let us know that even on a day so bright he was not blinded. Not by the cloud of witnesses in front of him. Not by the lights of cameras sending his words across the planet. That he was willing to sound so somber on his day of celebration tells us many things at once. At a time of scarcity, do not waste opportunities. When the world is watching and willing to follow, tell them where you want to take them. And above all tell the truth. (Read Obama's Inaugural...

CNN correspondent Zain Verjee, in a report posted on CNN.com on January 17, likened the expected large crowds for the inauguration of Barack Obama to the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca: “The coming political pilgrimage to Washington is similar to another grand event in both size and preparation -- the Hajj, the most important religious pilgrimage in the Muslim world.” Verjee has personal experience of the Hajj, as she belongs to the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam. She filed a web log for CNN of her experience on the pilgrimage in 2005. During her report, she emphasized how...

Filmmaker Ron Howard was chatting in Maureen Dowd's living room, saying he didn't mind spending hours in the cold for the inauguration and that even his conservative brother had come to admire Barack Obama. Outside on the chilly Sunday night, Tom Hanks decided against venturing into the jam-packed row house, mock-announcing to a small crowd on the Georgetown street that the party was paralyzed: "No more hot dogs! The Chinese food never got here!" The country's big-name anchors, actors, commentators, news executives, producers, editors and scribes have been celebrating the quadrennial event -- and themselves -- at one glitzy gathering...

A host of celebrities joined Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to air their 2009 New Year's resolutions and pledges to the new U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday. Stars like Eva Mendes, Nicole Richie, Ashlee Simpson, Courteney Cox, Eva Longoria Parker all agreed to make pledges on camera for a new MySpace.com campaign backed by Kutcher. Inspired by the new President, in the video Simpson pledged to be "a great mother," Mendes offered to "volunteer more of my time to help children battling serious illnesses," and Longoria Parker promised to "plant 500 trees this year to help our planet." Kutcher,...

Remind me to drink more Coke.

When it comes to the end times, there isn't much that I agree with Hal Lindsey about. Hal Lindsey, author of the huge (and phenomenally misguided) "Late Great Planet Earth" and rapture promoter wrote a column last week comparing the reception received by Barack Obama on his world tour to the reception that the Antichrist will one day receive. After describing some of the detail of Obama's trip, Lindsey says this: And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won't be Barack Obama, but Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of...

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture. Foreign leaders, who can read the polls as well as anyone, would go out of their way not to embarrass a man who may, six months from now, be president of the United States. Obama prepares thoroughly for the big occasions. He is almost always well-briefed, and he was traveling in sharp company — with Sens. Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel — so you knew he would be thoroughly ready for these...

The owners of a small South End gallery say they had the best of intentions when they commissioned a famous and often mischievous street artist to install a massive political mural on a construction wall lining one of the artiest strips of the South End. The mural, 13 feet high and nearly a block long, features multiple composite portraits of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln, their faces melded together in a rainbow of colors. It is meant, the gallery said, to inspire dialogue. That it did. The morning after artist Ron English and his band of...

The Obama campaign announced Monday that he will leave the hall of the Democratic National Convention in Denver and deliver a rock-star-style acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High, quadrupling his live audience. The speech will be on the fourth and final day of the convention, Aug. 28. Adding to the historic resonance of the first African-American to be nominated for president, that’s also the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” The move means additional expense for the television networks, where executives are having a conference call Monday to discuss the expense and...

Fairey’s $400k for Obama June 9, 2008 Back in January we posted on Shepard Fairey’s posters in support of the Barack Obama campaign. At the time, some comments cast doubt over how effective the posters would be. Not only is Obama now assured of the Democratic nomination but, we can reveal, sales of Fairey’s posters (shown above) raised over $400,000 to help him get there… Of course the posters in themselves, we assume, played only a very minor role in securing the nomination (although if anyone wants to conduct a poll on voter intentions versus coolness of poster design we’d...

This Month in Advertising Buzz up! The ad man behind Guitar Hero and Nike takes a subversive look at American ideals in his new book, E Pluribus Venom. As a graphic designer, Shepard Fairey has helped market some of the biggest names around: Nike, Zeppelin, Guitar Hero. And with his new book, E Pluribus Venom (Gingko Press, $30), Fairey has taken to branding America’s great national ideals -- capitalism, nationalism, militarism -- with a series of subversive ads. You won’t find much of the clear-eyed optimism of Fairey’s Obama posters (not included in the book), but you will find America....

"Obama volunteers from Columbus, Ohio, who have adopted the middle name Hussein include J. T. Marcum, left, Aaron Barclay, Alex Enderle, Norm Shoemaker and Chelsey McCune. They use the name on the Internet and in greeting one another."

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) may have one of the best-known faces in the world, but that doesn’t mean he is recognized everywhere, even in Washington. Washington Sports Club employee Takehia Wheeler was manning the front desk to scan members’ identification cards Friday morning when the presidential candidate walked in with his entourage. The gym opened a month ago in the Columbia Heights district. “He came in and walked past me,” Wheeler told In The Know. “I was like, ‘Sir, you need to come back.’ ” Wheeler said Obama looked familiar, but she didn’t recognize him. So she asked for his...

Barack Obama needs to give a speech about Iraq. Otherwise he will find himself in the unusual position of having being prescient about the war in 2002 and yet being overtaken by events in 2008. The most important reason to do this is not political. Iraq is fading in importance for the public and, to the extent that it matters as an electoral issue, most people agree with Obama's judgment that the war was not worth fighting. The reason to lay out his approach to Iraq is that, were he elected, the war would be his biggest and most immediate...

The New Yorker is hardly the optimal vehicle for reaching the conservative intelligentsia. But, last year, Barack Obama cooperated with a profile for that magazine where he seemed to be speaking directly to the right. Because he paid obeisance to the virtues of stability and continuity, his interlocutor, Larissa MacFarquhar, came away with the impression that the Illinois senator was an adherent of Edmund Burke: "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative." As The New Yorker's assessment shot...