Obama as Joker poster creator unmasked

The artist behind an iconic anti-Barack Obama poster depicting the US President as Batman villain The Joker (above, right) has been unmasked. However he is not, as assumed by many Americans, an angry Republican but a bored history student from the President's hometown who wanted an even more liberal presidential candidate.

The poster that has been adopted by conservatives in their protests over Obama's $1 trillion health reforms was created as part of a computer tutorial by a Palestinian-American student on a winter break from his studies at the University of Illinois.

Firas Alkhateeb, 20, told the Los Angeles Times that he made the image of Obama from the October 23 cover of Time magazine, as part of a Photoshop tutorial on how to 'Jokerise' portraits, and posted it on the photo-sharing website Flickr in January.

The Chicago student said he intended no political statement with the grotesque white-faced image. But an Obama critic, who remains anonymous, downloaded the picture, and replaced the Time logo with the words 'Socialism' before hanging posters all over Los Angeles this summer.

The posters caused a national debate in America, over whether the Joker reference was racist for showing Obama as a black-and-white minstrel in reverse. Others saw it as a hard-hitting right-wing critique on the President's corporate bailouts and his healthcare reforms.

The US-born student told the LA Times that he had been alarmed by what had happened and wanted to lie low. "After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," he said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him."

Alkhateeb said he did not vote in the US presidential elections in November, but if he had he would have voted for Dennis Kucinich, one of America's most liberal politicians. "In terms of domestic policy, I don't think [Obama's] really doing much good for the country right now. We don't have to hero worship the guy." However he added: "I think he's definitely doing better than Bush was." ·