Meet Obama Joker Poster Creator Student Firas Alkhateeb

Firas Alkhateeb's joker posters were picked up by a Texas talk radio host I had never heard of, Alex Jones, who calls Obama a "sociopathic criminal." Jones helped spread the poster by holding a contest. See the video below.

Bored during winter school break, Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, crafted the picture of Obama with the recognizable clown makeup using Adobe's Photoshop software, our colleague Mark Milian writes at Top of the Ticket.

"Alkhateeb had been tinkering with the program to improve the looks of photos he had taken on his clunky Kodak camera. The Joker project was his grandest undertaking yet. Using a tutorial he'd found online about how to "Jokerize" portraits, he downloaded the October 23 Time magazine cover of Obama and began digitally painting over it. Four or five hours later, he happily had his product.''
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Alkhateeb says he wasn't actively trying to cover his tracks, but he did want to lay low. He initially had concerns about connecting his name with anything critical of the president -- especially living in Chicago, where people are "very, very liberal," he said.

"After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

"I abstained from voting in November," he wrote in an e-mail. "Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing as there was no chance Obama would not win the state." If he had to choose a politician to support, Alkhateeb said, it would be Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

Alkhateeb bought into the wingnut Obama as Christ thing. It's funny that wingnuts loved the poster created by a guy who would've voted for Dennis Kucinich and whose family is from Palestine (wingnuts don't like Muslims). There's so much irony here. Here are his thoughts on Obama:

Although Alkhateeb claims he was making no political statement with the artwork, he's plugged into the Washington debate. Though born in the United States, his Palestinian family closely follows Middle Eastern politics.

"I think he's definitely doing better than Bush was," Alkhateeb said of Obama. Alkhateeb's views on foreign relations align with the Democrats, he said, while he prefers Republican ideals on domestic issues.

Alkhateeb's assessment of Obama: "In terms of domestic policy, I don't think he's really doing much good for the country right now," he said. "We don't have to 'hero worship' the guy." Read it all at the LAT

This video, part of Alex Jones' contest, riffs on the pro-Obama street art campaign during the election.