On Monday, President Obama debuted (again) on Twitter, starting a new account with a banner photo featuring the POTUS, First Lady Michelle, the couple’s two lovely daughters, and… Al Sharpton. Cropped out of the photo were Laura and George W. Bush.
With the new Twitter handle @POTUS, the President fired up his newest account saying, “Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.”
The header image used for the account, though, is interesting. It was a wide shot photo taken of the marchers at the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma earlier this year.
In the wide framed image, one can see civil rights activist and Georgia Congressman John Lewis standing between President and Mrs. Obama. Also seen are the Obama’s two teenaged daughters. But just over the President’s left shoulder, Al Sharpton is prominently displayed.
Clearly the president is proud to feature a photo of race agitator and multi-million-dollar tax evader Al Sharpton on this new Twitter feed.
The photo is also interesting for who doesn’t appear in the image, despite his presence during the event the image chronicles. In the original photos of the anniversary march, former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura can be seen marching just a few marchers to Obama’s left.
In fact, the Bushes were marching only one person to the left of the last person cropped into the Obama Twitter feed image.
Obama isn’t the first to crop the Bushes out of photos of the Selma anniversary march, though. In March, The New York Times played the same game in its coverage of the event by cropping the Bushes out of the photo featured on its front page.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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