OBAMA on GAY MARRIAGE: The 8 Most Eye-Catching Cartoons

JOE BIDEN forced Barack Obama’s hand into marriage.

Specifically, same-sex marriage.

So goes one of the more common tacks as the nation’s satirists take aim — and decide that the veep “shooting off his mouth,” before Obama expressed his support of gay marriage, is the most inviting comedic target. As everyone from the Onion to Obama himself knows, Biden often makes for a ready, consensus laugh-line.

Editorial cartoonists’ reactions were all over the map, natch, but many of the approaches seemed to fall into similar humorous groupings.

So with that in mind, here are Comic Riffs’ Eight Most Eye-Catching Obama-on-Gay-Marriage Cartoons — divided by editorial angle:

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1. Some artists, such as Scranton’s John Cole and Phoenix’s Steve Benson, constructed their cartoons so Biden is a one-man visual or verbal payoff:

JOHN COLE :

(JOHN COLE / Scranton Times-Tribune / Cagle.com )

STEVE BENSON:

(STEVE BENSON / Arizona Republic / Cagle.com )

2. Other cartoonists, such as Atlanta’s Mike Luckovich, opted for a celebratory sense of the historic...

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MIKE LUCKOVICH :

(MIKE LUCKOVICH / Atlanta Journal Constitution ) .

3. ...While others, such as Michael Ramirez, viewed Obama as willing to sell his stance right about the time of George Clooney’s big-money Hollywood fundraiser:

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MICHAEL RAMIREZ :

(MICHAEL RAMIREZ / Investors Business Daily / Cagle.com )

4. Some satirists mocked Obama’s “evolution” toward his newly stated political position. New Orleans’ Steve Kelley depicted both of the presumed nominees stubbing their political toes:

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STEVE KELLEY :

(STEVE KELLEY / New Orleans Times-Picayune / Cagle.com - .)

5. And artists such as Chattanooga’s Clay Bennett and Cuba’s Alex Falco — using approaches bearing some similarity to the striking new Newsweek cover and to (Post contributor) Bob Staake’s “Spectrum of Light” New Yorker cover — rely on the power of mashup graphic design. Namely, grafting the rainbow’s symbolism onto an iconic image:

CLAY BENNETT :

(CLAY BENNETT / Chattanooga Times Free Press/ WPWG )

ALEX FALCO :

(ALEX FALCO (Cuba) / courtesy of Cagle.com )

6. And lastly, the Taiwan-based animators at Next Media Animation respond to The Post’s Mitt Romney’s Prep School History piece by Style’s Jason Horowitz. But embedded within (beginning at the 40-second mark) is NMA’s over-the-top depiction (they do love the language of stock caricatures) of Obama’s support of gay marriage.

Remember, we didn’t say we “endorse.” We simply said “eye-catching”:

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NMA.tv (Obama at 40-second mark):

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