Where he wrote “hope,” he should have wrote “nope.”
The street artist Shepard Fairey famous for creating the “Hope” poster for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election said in an interview with Esquire that the president has not even come “close” to living up to the “hope” message conveyed by his piece.
“Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he’s compromised on that I never would have expected,” Fairey explained. “I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he’d support].”
“I’ve met Obama a few times, and I think Obama’s a quality human being, but I think that he finds himself in a position where your actions are largely dictated by things out of your control,” the artist elaborated. “I’m not giving him a pass for not being more courageous, but I do think the entire system needs an overhaul and taking money out of politics would be a really good first step.”
And, the influence of money in politics is the very reason Fairey is refusing to support Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential contest.
“I mean nothing against Hillary [Clinton],” the artist admitted when asked who would get his endorsement. “I agree with Hillary on most issues, but campaign finance structure makes me very angry, because it means that politicians are going to have to raise a huge amount of money, which narrows the field dramatically. There are only certain kinds of people that either have the preexisting resources or the willingness to work in way that will get them a lot of money from donors.”
Well, one can assume that there won’t be much positive Hillary street art adorning America’s cities to outweigh all those negative posters.
Fairey called on Americans to stop being so “ignorant and lazy” and actually vote in elections to enact real change instead of complaining about elected politicians not living up to expectations.
“What frustrates me to no end are people who want to blame Obama or blame anything that is something that if they were actually doing anything as simple as voting, it might not be as bad as it is,” Fairey alleged. “There’s a lot of finger pointing and very little action and very little research into the dynamics that created the situation that they’re unhappy about.”
