Via Fryda Wolff, apparently there is some controversy regarding a poster contest the Obama campaign is running. Basically, the contest is that people volunteer to submit a poster promoting the President’s jobs bill/jobs plan/re-election. The winner gets publicity. The controversy is that people say it’s wrong of the campaign to ask that people volunteer their time to promote a jobs bill. Judging by the comments on the Rolling Stone article, people, especially graphic designers, are quite upset by this.

I don’t understand the outrage. No one complains when people volunteer to, for instance, go around from door-to-door promoting a political campaign. And this is actually a much more efficient use of resources in that, unlike a word-of-mouth pro-candidate or brochure delivery, a poster is something that you design once and can thereafter be replicated cheaply. Also, it introduces an element of competition and reward that is absent from more typical campaign volunteer work. What, I ask, is the problem?