Inside the Beltway

Fakery and reality

It’s not every day that a graphic artist finds his work cited as a major issue in a presidential campaign.

Richard Taylor isn’t exactly happy that John Kerry’s spokesman, David Wade, named him as an example in support of Mr. Kerry’s assertion that Republicans are the “most crooked … lying group I’ve ever seen.”

For the past six years, Mr. Taylor has been creating political parody images under the pseudonym “Registered.” For instance, he helped create the “Sore-Loserman” logo brandished by Republican activists during the 2000 Florida election recount, and during the Iraq war he created a counterfeit Iraqi dinar — featuring President Bush’s picture and images of surrendering Iraqi soldiers — that was shown during MSNBC’s coverage of the fall of Baghdad.

Several of Mr. Taylor’s other designs can be seen at www.registeredmedia.com.

A few days ago, when Mr. Kerry got caught calling Republicans “crooked,” the Kerry campaign told reporters the remark was in response to “a doctored photo, circulated on the Internet, placing the young Kerry right next to anti-Vietnam War activist Jane Fonda.”

Mr. Taylor says that photo — not to be confused with a genuine Associated Press photo showing Mr. Kerry seated behind Miss Fonda at a 1971 rally — was his work. He says he created the fake image (using computer software to merge separate photos) to dramatize the Kerry-Fonda collaboration in the so-called “Winter Soldier” project, which accused U.S. troops of widespread atrocities in Vietnam.

Says Mr. Taylor: “I wanted to illustrate what actually happened historically” of Miss Fonda and Mr. Kerry, then a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, “speaking at the same rally, on the same day, on the same stage.”

Presented as a newspaper clipping with the headline, “Fonda Speaks to Vietnam At Anti-War Rally,” the photo looked real enough that experienced journalists had trouble spotting Mr. Taylor’s fake.

The altered photo was posted on the FreeRepublic.com Web site for less than two hours before Mr. Taylor deleted it. But that was just long enough for the image to be copied by Vietnam veterans who oppose Mr. Kerry’s Democratic presidential bid. The anti-Kerry vets mistook the photo as genuine and circulated it widely on the Internet.

Since then, the fake has been the subject of a New York Times article and other news coverage, and Mr. Taylor said he has been threatened with legal action for copyright violation.

A Michigan resident who has a day job in the financial industry, Mr. Taylor says contrary to the Kerry campaign’s suggestion, he has no official ties to the Republican Party.

“Karl Rove is not on my speed-dial,” he says.

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