A flier put out by the Jeb Bush–supporting super-PAC Right to Rise USA got a little overzealous promoting the candidate’s diverse appeal this week. The mailer, which R2RUSA sent to 86,000 Iowans, was attempting to answer the essential question “Why Jeb?” and featured the smiling candidate standing with his hands on his hips — except one of the hands doesn’t look like it’s his, or white:
And if you look at his other (right) hand, you can see that it appears to be digitally colored white as well, as the shadows are the same color as the black hand.
This is clearly what happens when, even in a post–Citizen’s United world, candidates aren’t allowed to coordinate heavily enough with their super-PACs and the poor super-PACs have to hit the stock images and rely on some communications intern to figure out how to Photoshop their white Republican candidate’s smaller head on a larger black man’s body. Poor Jeb, even his supporters think he needs a better body to win. (Or not, see update at the bottom of the post.)
Here is the original tweet referencing the mailer:
Update 8/23: It looks like it apparently is Jeb’s hand (and body). Responding to the ridicule, Right to Rise USA’s Paul Lindsay has tweeted out the original shadow-laden photo:
So instead of a bi-racial Photoshop fail, it was just a plain old photo-selection, poor-digital-retouching fail. We regret the error, but don’t expect Donald Trump to apologize for making fun of it.
