Obama “joker” artist Palestinian-American college dude

The man behind the “mysterious” Obama-as-Joker poster image has been identified (sort of), and it wasn’t a right-winger- he actually would have voted for Dennis Kucinich. (Note: he did not caption the photo nor did he distribute the posters in LA.)

A student from Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois, Firas Alkhateeb, knocked together the image using Photoshop and an online tutorial over Christmas break. It took about 4-5 hours, and on January 18th, he uploaded it to Flickr. Like many internet generated images and memes, it kind of just sat there for a few months. No one noticed or cared.

Until earlier this month. Some still anonymous party found the image, added the caption, and disseminated the posters in Los Angeles. Since then, Flickr has removed the photo due to copyright concerns, which Alkhateeb is just fine with. In addition to not wanting Time to come after him, Alkhateeb initially was concerned about agitating Obama fans in his home state of Illinois.

As for why I pointed out his cultural and ethnic heritage, does anyone else find it awesome that the same people who tearfully bemoaned President’s Obama’s seekrit Muslim faith and were so frightened of that held up the work of a man who calls Rahm Emmanuel “a Zionist” and “closely follows Middle Eastern politics” as their rallying cry? Just me?

Oh, and commenters? Even the man who made the image agreed with my assessment. Says Alkhateeb:

Regardless, Alkhateeb does agree with the Obama “Hope” artist about “socialism” being the wrong caption for the Joker image. “It really doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” he said. “To accuse him of being a socialist is really … immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?”

[Source: LA Times]