It's already been thoroughly documented that all the really funny pictures of Sarah Palin that you saw on blogs or anywhere else are just unpatriotic Photoshop forgeries. Everybody, including CNN, was fooled at first, but now nobody believes anything unless they personally snap it on a Polaroid. It's not just idiots screwing around, as you may have suspected; it's an important political trend, demonstrating that "average citizens were exploiting their expanded capacity to manipulate and circulate images to create the grassroots equivalent of editorial cartoons." PBS says so! That happens to be true, though. Elections have turned on far less exacting smears than these. Why are Palin and McCain so much more popular Photoshop victims than Obama? 1. More liberals are good at Photoshop, and 2. Photoshop Obama and watch how quickly you're accused of racism. It's a dangerous game. In the spirit of civic education, a composite of some of the best remixes that the Republicans have inspired:

[PBS Mediashift]