Desperate Republicans? Recycling four-year-old PhotoShop hoaxes . . .

 

This is an encore post, from August of 2008.  We need to recall, an issue early in the Democratic primaries was ‘who would you want on the Hotline at 2:00 a.m.’  Sometime before the end of the primaries, a jokester mashed up a photo of candidate Barack Obama, changed the line on the phone handpiece, and added a clock at 3:00 a.m. on the wall. 

Republicans picked up on the photo, and thinking it a real photo, shipped it around during the general campaign.  It was a hoax then, and it still is.  I found it today on Facebook, and found people defending the hoax photo as real.  Oy, it will be that kind of election as Republicans get more desperate and more crude.  The encore post:

Dennis at Thinking in a Marrow Bone — not an Obama supporter, mind you — posted a conversation he had with a guy who posted a hoaxed photo of Barack Obama, purporting to show him holding a landline telephone upside down.

This is the hoax photo

The real photograph. Notice there is no clock on the wall, and the phone works properly. By the way, the suit fits, too — Obama’s a very tall man, and that’s what a well-fitting suit looks like on a tall man sitting in a low chair.

 

Dennis called him on the hoax. After a few rounds of weak defense, and then moral waffling of significant proportion, the hoaxer deleted the comments from his blog. Dennis preserved the conversation at TMB.

Moral of the story: Don’t believe much of what you hear or see, without corroboration. If a claim casts aspersions on someone, and comes on the internet, check it out before granting credence. Thanks to Dennis, an honest guy, for exposing the hoax and preserving the record of it.

Hoaxers are malicious and will do almost anything to damage Obama, even if it requires bringing down the U.S. and burning the flag. No wonder George Washington wanted out of this sort of politics.

Question: What’s the deal with the clock in the doctored photo? [Oh – it says “3:00 o’clock”]

Honor roll: Bloggers and others who exposed the hoax:

• Phil Kulak
• Urban Legends
• Glass City Jungle
• 2Parse
• Glock 21 Op/Ed

Dishonor roll, the Little List, bloggers who tried to perpetrate and perpetuate the hoax, or who got suckered themselves:

• Obamablog ’08 (an anti-Obama site)
• Blogplatoon
• Israpundit
• Nevada Thunder
• Conservative and Proud (special award: Also fell victim to the “Stalin-Marx” poll hoax, with edits)
• LMO’s World
• Moonbattery
• FreeRepublic (of course)
• Tactical Underpants
• Beewulf
• Sons of the South
• Crabby Fat Guy
• Blue Grass, Silk Roads, and Siamese Smiles

Special Consideration:

• PeoplesCube
• Snopes.com
• Okie on the Lam
• PicBits