The Audacity of Joke

I stole the blog icon for this week from this io9 post asking "Does Obama's Win Mean A Dark Knight Oscar?" I take it up because this dichotomy has been fascinating me for the last few weeks: what does it mean that the two most important pop-culture icons of 2008 have been Barack Obama on the one hand and Heath Ledger's Joker on the other? What does this remarkable level of cognitive dissonance say about us, and our moment? I don't know if I've got the time to write it—I'm supposed to be reading for my exams—but there's definitely a paper in there somewhere. As the tag says, it's been a funny year.