Obama - Joker Poster Artist Outed

The artist behind the Obama - Joker poster which began to make the rounds earlier this month has been outed by the Los Angeles Times. It was just a 20-year-old college student from Chicago, and a liberal, in fact.

Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, Photoshopped the picture of Obama with as the Joker during his winter break. He started with the Time Magazine cover of Obama, and uploaded it to Flickr in January.

It was only later, when someone else discovered it, removed the references to the Time cover and added the tagline "Socialism" beneath it that the photo went viral. The Flickr image has since been removed, but not due to Alkhateeb's actions: Flickr removed the Joker image due to copyright-infringement concerns.

Alkhateeb also said his original image had no political implications. With regards to the "Socialism" poster, as I said earlier, anyone who knows what the Joker really stands for knows that he's not a Socialist; he's an Anarchist.

Alkhateeb's own comment:

"It really doesn't make any sense to me at all. To accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?"

Note: many equate communism with socialism. They are two different things, as anyone who has lived in such societies, such as my wife, can attest. Additionally, those who worry about America becoming like Russia also are misinformed. It's become more capitalist (though still rife with corruption) since the collapse of the Soviet Union than anything else.