Fake? I don't know. Accurate? Definitely...

That great picture that John Podhoretz found which has amused many of us for the last couple of days:



has been deemed a fake by some on the left, apparently offended that anyone might think a Democrat would wear such a crude slogan in the presence of a statesman like Bill Clinton.

There are only a couple of problems with that.

1. This isn't something that just got posted at Free Republic - it's an AP photo, hosted on the Yahoo news feed.


2. "While some of the letters are at varying angles, apparently following the contours of the shirt, not one of them is distorted by a change in contour within the letter." I'm not a photoshop expert, but I don't think that that's correct.
   
   
   • Clearly the right leg of the "h" in "who" is narrower than the left. The "h" in heard which is the same font has both legs of equal width.
   
   
   • The left side of the adjoining "o" is narrower than the right.
   
   
   • The "r" in heard is creased through the upper left. Consequently, it's narrower than the "r" in "ever", despite being the same font.
   
   
   • The "a" at the end of the 3rd line is considerably narrower than the "a" in "heard", despite, again, being the same font.
   
   
   • The first "e" in "piece" is significantly narrower than the 2nd "e" in piece, clearly distorted by the change in contour within the letter.
   
   
   
   
3. The phrase has been circulating amongst Democratic circles since at least August and September of 2004 (scroll down to "Comments" and you'll see this - "Now that's a bumper sticker! I want a t-shirt!") - it's not something that some enterprising wing-nut in the AP invented to make Democrats look immature."


4. While I haven't found that exact T-shirt design, you can see that slogan on shirts (and mugs and bumper stickers, etc.) here.
   And here.
   And here.
   And here.
   And here's the slogan on a bumper sticker available by following a link from the DNC.
   And here's a blog comment from April of 2003: "I was at the Democratic Party website and I just LOVE these bumper stickers: "Regime change begins at home," "Save the Environment: Plant a Bush Back in Texas," "Democrats are sexy: whoever heard of a great piece of elephant," and "When in doubt, start a war." I think I need to get some of them!"
   
   
   And here's a picture of a college-age female wearing one proudly.

Again, I've no way of knowing for sure whether there was photo-shopping involved here. But there's no obvious reason to think so, and there's no reason to think that the image created is somehow unfair to Democrats or unrepresentative of certain members of the Democratic party.