About

Wizard Obama is an image macro series based on a perfectly timed photograph of President Barack Obama in which he appears to be conjuring an orb of energy or wielding a crystal ball. The captions typically portray President Obama as a possessor of a magical power or wizardry skills.

Origin

On August 13th, 2012, President Obama gave a speech at Bayliss Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as part of his three day re-election campaign bus tour through the state. During his speech, Associated Press^[1] photographer Carolyn Kaster captured a striking image of the president making a hand gesture in front of a glaring stage light. From the particular angle of Kaster's shot, the president appeared as if he was holding a ball of fire in his hand.

The humorous comparison of Kaster's image to wizardry was first made by New York Magazine^[2] writer Dan Amira in an article titled "Presdent Obama is a Wizard" posted on the following day of August 14th.

Spread

That same day, an entry for "Wizard Obama" was launched on the image macro generator site MemeGenerator.^[3] In its first two weeks, the page went on to spawn nearly 150 captioned instances featuring references to fantasy fiction franchises like Harry Potter, Street Fighter, Dragon Ball and Lord of the Rings. Meanwhile, various news articles reporting on Obama's wizard-like photograph also began appearing on a number of internet culture and political blogs like Gawker^[4], BuzzFeed^[9], Uproxx^[7] and Politico^[5], as well as via mainstream news sites including NBC Today^[6], Entertainment Weekly^[10] and Now MSN.^[12] In addition, the image has been submitted multiple times to Reddit^[13] under similar titles, albeit without much success.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References