Iconic Hopey Picture Just Some Old Reuters Shot Flipped Around
There has apparently been a raging mystery over the source of the SERIOUS Barack Obama photo in that HOPE poster we've all seen so many times that the only logical reaction, now, is to give the same Soviety red-blue Socialist Realism treatment to, uh, Bill Kristol. But the mystery is now solved! Turns out a Reuters campaign-trail shooter named Jim Young took the picture way back in January 2007. And even though Young was following the Obama campaign for the next two years -- constantly seeing and even photographing the HOPE/CHANGE posters that were plastered to every vertical surface -- he didn't recognize his shot!
Philadelphia web designer Mike Cramer decided to look for the Historic Source Photograph and pretty quickly came up with the Reuters shot, used in a bizarreTIMEpiece about Obama not being black enough to get the support of black people.
In a hilarious preview of the next two years (and the next eight years to come), the weird column starts like this:
For all the predictable outrage Joe Biden's recent comments about Barack Obama elicited, the gaffe put a spotlight on one of the more unfortunate forces fueling Obamania.
Biden, what a jackass! Anyway, the photographer, Jim Young, snapped the shot at the Senate, during confirmation hearings for John Negroponte to be the Torture Czar. This is why Obama looks so serious. He is confronting complete & total Evil, yet congressional decorum prevented him from hopping over his desk and planting a pitchfork in Negroponte's nutsack.
Let's see, what else? Ah, Jim Young is honored that his Reuters shot was flipped and posterized by the poster artist, Shepard Fairey.
Four months from now, Richard Cohen will write aWashington Postcolumn about how this incident proves Barack Obama needs to subscribe to the print edition of theSaturday Evening Post, and make a blackberry pie like mom used to buy, the end.
MYSTERY SOLVED! The Obama Poster Photographer ID'd [Scene on the Road]