Photo Op '08: Photo Stirs Up The Obama Haters

Obama in Kenya is the most important political photo of the moment, for reasons we'll get to shortly. But let's start at the beginning.

- August 2006: Sen. Barack Obama travels to Kenya, the birth country of his father, the home of his grandmother and uncle. On August 27, the Associated Press moves a photo credited to an unnamed stringer with this caption:

"U.S. Senator Barack Obama, right, is dressed as a Somali Elder by Sheikh Mahmed Hassan, left, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya, near the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia. The area is at the epicenter of a severe drought that has hit the Horn of Africa region, after erratic and insufficient rains during the April-June season."

The picture, as far as we can tell, has been readily available in the AP archive ever since.

- 2007: Obama runs for president and is immediately dogged by persistent rumors that he is Muslim and somehow unpatriotic, based on information like his middle name (Hussein) and the fact that he lived in Indonesia as a child. People with access to actual facts find these rumors to be false.

- 2008: The little-read supermarket tabloid National Examiner publishes the Kenya photo in its Feb. 4, 2008 issue with the headline "Obama's Shocking Al Qaeda Link," along with a roundabout and speculative story.

- Feb. 23: Someone scans the Examiner article and posts it on the Free Republic Web site. It strikes a nerve. Posters wonder whether the image is fake (it isn't) and offer ill-informed commentary like, "we do NOT want some son-of-a-jhiadi in the WH." Over the weekend, lots of other conservative-leaning blogs pick up the post and echo these comments.

- Feb. 25: Today, The Drudge Report runs the photo at the top of its site and publishes a bulletin headlined "CLINTON STAFFERS CIRCULATE 'DRESSED' OBAMA." The Clinton campaign responds by accusing the Obama campaign of being divisive, a comment which has the effect of legitimizing the story and keeping it alive. Many major news outlets have picked it up, and it's on its way to being the main campaign story of the current news cycle.

This photo dust-up will play out in interesting ways in the next few days, and thus is the main highlight of our PDNPulse Photo Op '08 post today. Drudge has already noted that President Bush has been photographed in traditional African garb, as have many other politicians.

Below is our weekly chart tracking photo coverage of the major candidates based on searches of Yahoo! News.