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Obama Ad Says, “Go to hell Obama”

By on March 5, 2012
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A controversial ad in a Metro station is raising eyebrows and has a Virginia congressman demanding its removal.

The small, lighted billboard is on the platform at the Clarendon Metro station in Arlington County. It is an ad for an independent, 50-minute movie about President Barack Obama’s health care initiatives.

The billboard essentially expresses the outrage of a California man who has made a film called “Sick and Sicker.”

Logan Darrow Clements, who wrote and produced the film, spoke to us from Los Angeles Wednesday night.

“It’s meant to say, ‘Hey, wake up!’ We’re not going to tolerate socialized medicine,” Clements explains. “When Obama gets done wrecking destruction on our medical system, our lives are going to be in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. And to me, that’s profane.”

It is not just the four-letter word, but the four-word sentence that has some people upset.

“‘Go to hell.’ Those are fighting words,” says Metro rider Laura Turowski. “You use that when someone cuts you off in traffic. That’s not for a debate on health care in our country.”

Northern Virginia Congressman Jim Moran calls it offensive.

“When you put something on a government building, it sets an example,” Moran says. “And this is saying it’s okay to tell the President of the United States, whoever it may be, to go to hell. But it’s not okay. And it’s particularly not okay to do it on government property.”

Metro says it really had no choice in the matter. In a statement to FOX 5 News, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel writes: “WMATA advertising has been ruled by the courts as a public forum protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and we may not decline ads based on their political content.”

Congressman Moran calls that hogwash.

“The courts consistently hold that you should not be allowed to put profanity and obscenity on public property, and this is public property, and it is obscene to be doing this kind of thing,” he says.

Clements says the ad cost him $800 to keep it up a month.

Metro says it will be coming down March 12.