It made national headlines almost immediately. With right-wingers calling Obama a socialist from the campaign, a photo-shop image appeared anonymously with Obama made to be Batman’s nemesis the Joker with the word “socialism” on the bottom:

The photo never made sense. The Joker was against order, he sought to cause havoc in society. While socialists do cause havoc and some are murderous, their brand of havoc is that of central planning. Obama cannot wish to be a Big Government and at the same time a orderless Joker. But no one ever lost a bet overestimating the intelligence of American right-wingers.

No one ever claim to take credit for the photo. It just appeared on one site to the next. I say it on a friend’s Facebook page.

Well, now we know who is the originator of the photo: 20-year, Chicago college student and Palestinian-American Firas Alkhateeb. Firas though did not write the word “socialist” and while not a big Obama supporter does vote or did vote Democratic:

Firas photo-shopped the Time magazine cover of Obama and then went to work on it to create the image of the Joker. Firas just wanted to poke the image of Obama as if he were “the second coming of Christ.”

“From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him,” Firas was quoted as saying. The young student supported left-wing Democrat Dennis Kucinich whom along with libertarian Republican Ron Paul was the only publicly pro-Palestinian candidate in 2008.

Firas just wanted to have fun with Obama and posted the image on his Flickr. An unknown right-winger then took Firas’ photo and put the word “socialist” and then circulated it.

The young artist criticized the revision of his photo as “immature.”

“It really doesn’t make any sense to me at all to accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature,” Firas stated. “First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?”

Hum, another leftist Palestinian connected to Obama...

Firas is talented and should be proud that something he created received so much attention. On his Flickr page he features other interesting art. This is my favorite:

Source: Kabobfest.