The Once And Future Fred

No doubt the Presidency ages officeholders, but a montage showing before and after shots of the six most recent first couples jumped the gun and jumped the shark by including an after picture of the current occupants, Barack & Michelle Obama.



If you can't see it clearly, here's a better version of the way Long Island's Smithtown Messenger, a weekly from Suffolk County New York, depicted the post White House Obamas:

NY weekly shows Obamas as 'Sanford and Son' actors
By FRANK ELTMAN (AP via Google News) 5/6/10

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. — A weekly newspaper photo depicting President Barack Obama and his wife as characters from the TV sitcom "Sanford and Son" was intended as political satire and not a racist commentary, the publisher said Wednesday.

Phillip Sciarello, publisher and part owner of the Smithtown Messenger on New York's Long Island, defended the decision to publish the photo, but added the newspaper would run a retraction in its next edition for anyone who might have been offended.

The photo spread features "before and after" shots of the last six presidents and their wives, starting with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and ending with the Obamas. The "after" photo of the Obamas is a shot from the 1970s show, with Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford and LaWanda Page as Sanford's sister-in-law, Aunt Esther. She is seen standing ready to box Sanford; the characters often verbally jousted as part of the show's story line.

The photo has had an immediate political and economic impact as local governments removed the Messenger and its sister publications as official newspapers, meaning they will no longer publish paid town government legal notices.

"The reference to racial stereotypes is where the line was crossed," Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko told Newsday (Long Island's giant daily paper). While Tracey Edwards, the NAACP's Long Island regional director, described the portrayal of the Obamas as "despicable and disrespectful. If this was intended as satire, it misses the mark."

It's not the first time:

This picture covered comedian Red Foxx with controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright, and Obama's face was pasted over Sanford & Son co-star Demond Wilson. This is labeled as coming from a conservative blog that largely specializes in derisive "humor".