ILJ Sourced In Wikinews

To my utter amazement, the Intrepid Liberal Journal was sourced at the bottom of an entry in Wikinews today. Longtime readers of this blog may recall my October 23, 2006 post entitled, Reminiscing About the Future: Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech. It was my attempt to draft a hypothetical inauguration speech in Obama's voice at the time. Unbeknownst to me, it was speculated that the same Obama photo I uploaded from a Google Images search was later used to create the iconic Barack Obama HOPE poster by artist Shepard Fairey. The mystery was ultimately solved by the resourceful sleuthing of Tom Gralish. Gralish identified Mannie Garcia as being the photographer of the picture used by Fairey

I've only recently learned how much controversy existed over this topic. During the campaign I was entirely focused on issues, the horserace narrative and my activism. These sorts of side topics did not interest me and it also never occurred to me that my post would generate interest because of the photo I used.

It's also amusing to read some of the comments from that post two years ago. Keep in mind when reading it that the Democrats hadn't even retaken congress yet. I also received numerous emails at the time accusing me of being crazy for even suggesting that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama could be elected president.

Ironic that the very day President Obama was inaugurated my hypothetical inauguration speech has received such high volume traffic. I was receiving emails from people with photography blogs and journalists hoping I might know who took the original photograph until Gralish figured it out. Such is life in the online world. Kudos to Tom Gralish for figuring it out.