The latest craze to go viral in America are copies of what have been dubbed Obama Joker posters that began popping up across Los Angeles early today.

What started as posters and rapidly escalated into t-shirts, baseball caps, stickers and coffee mugs, is a doctored photo of US President Barack Obama, his faced coated with white powder similar to silent movie actors, with two large black circles around his eyes and his lips smeared blood-red.

Beneath the photo, which has a large red border, is the word Socialism.

Many people have been quick to draw a comparison between the doctored photo and Heath Ledger’s “Joker” character from the Dark Knight Batman movie, hence the Obama Joker Poster tag.

No one has taken credit for the poster, and no one seems to have any idea who is behind them. The posters have been appearing in the Hollywood area in particular, though there have been sightings across Los Angeles.

There are unconfirmed rumors that this is a campaign by conservatives who are angry over Obama’s policies, but so far there is no evidence to indicate this is the case.

Other people are seeing the posters as having racist undertones, while yet others say they refer to the carefully orchestrated Obama “beer summit” with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., and maligned Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley.

The summit became a face-saving out for the President, after he labelled Sergeant Crowley as having “acted stupidly” when he arrested Professor Gates for suspected house breaking.

At the well scripted and tightly controlled beer bust, vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr., was roped in, according to some, to balance the black/white ratio. Yet other people say it is a sign of disrespect from the black community and implies the President has lost touch with his roots.

All parties to the beer bust said no apologies were made, and many people still feel Mr Obama crossed the line by labeling the white cop as stupid for arresting a black man in a house in an affluent Cambridge suburb at night without the keys to the premises.