When trying to guess the artist responsible for the controversial poster portraying President Barack Obama as the Joker – which began appearing all over the streets of Los Angeles a few weeks back – it’s safe to say that few people would have imagined a liberal Chicago college student.
But that is exactly who it turned out to be. As the Los Angeles Times reported Monday, 20-year-old Firas Alkhateeb created the now infamous image while playing around in January with Adobe Photoshop software. Taking an image from an old Time Magazine cover of Obama, Alkhateeb found a program online that allowed an image to be “Jokerized.” After painting the picture of Obama with white clown make and slicing up his mouth, Alkhateeb uploaded it to the photo-sharing site Flickr.
The image wasn’t online very long, as it infringed against copyrights, but someone had quickly gotten a hold of it, added the word “socialism” below, and recently began posting the posters. The University of Illinois senior stated in the interview he does not agree with that word being used to describe the president.
“It really doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” he said told the paper. “To accuse him of being a socialist is really … immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?”
