This is even better than when my pictures were published in an Italian political newspaper a couple years ago.  Apparently one of my photoshops (which Frank had the idea for and I exectuted) has become kind of an urban legend.  Maggie Katzen told me a couple months ago it was floating around, but I wouldn’t have guessed to what extent.  We’ve now got our own snopes.com entry (I did send them an update about its origin), and the Washington Post talked about it in an article yesterday.  It was made in response to Hillary’s “3:00 a.m. crisis call” ad.  I had no idea.  Getting that cord to look right with that funky carpet was no easy feat. 

 http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/phone.asp

Too Good To Be True? It Usually Is.
Snopes.com Sniffs Out What You Can Believe
By Monica Hesse

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 28, 2008; Page M01 

This election has been hard on all of our inboxes.  Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s (cut and pasted) head on a patriotically bikini’d bod? Sen. Barack Obama cluelessly chatting on a (Photoshopped) upside-down phone? Sen. John McCain identifying himself — according to a totally mangled forward — as a “war criminal”?  Gotta be fakes, all of them. Right?

Because why would a grown man hold a phone upside do– well, then again, it wouldn’t be the first time a politician was a doofus maximus. So maybe, just to be on the safe side. . . . Which is why no inbox has had it harder in these last frenzied weeks than the one belonging to David and Barbara Mikkelson, the founders and sole researchers at urban legend mega-site Snopes.com.

The couple debunked each of the myths above, along with dozens more allegations ranging from the wacko (a claim that the Bible identifies Obama as the antichrist) to the wonko (a widely circulated comparison of the two candidates’ tax plans).

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092600853.html?referrer=emailarticle

The e-mail exchange that created it:

 3/1/2008
Barack Answers the Phone at 3AM Photoshop
Frank J. to Cadet Happy

Do you think you could photoshop this image so that he’s holding the phone upside down? I want to do an image of what would happen for President Obama if there were an international crisis at 3AM. It would probably be easier to make it a small image by zooming in on his head.

Thanks.

————————–

3/2/2008
Cadet Happy to Frank

here you go

————————–

3/2/2008
Frank J. to Cadet Happy

Awesome. Thanks. It will be up tomorrow morning.

————————–

3/2/2008
Cadet Happy to Frank

here’s a version with a clock

————————–

3/3/2008
Frank J. to Cadet Happy

Michelle Malkin declared it “Photoshop of the Day.”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/03/photoshop-of-the-day-3/

Awesome job. I thought it would have been pretty hard removing the original cord, but that’s seamless.

————————–

3/3/2008
Cadet Happy to Frank

my favorite comment was the one about the cords in the back of the tv [which i did nothing with, and supposedly showed the photo was fake]– i would have made the clock more realistic if I had realized the phone looked so real to the untrained eye — in my estimation the cord was just passable — if the clock didn’t stand out a bit, you wouldn’t even notice it in the background

i heard something funny on hannity this morning — they were stating that the 3 am call was from Bill stating his meeting was running late — there’s probably a lot of funny obvious stuff that can be done along those lines