Taking political vanity to a whole new level
By Steve Benen Tuesday Jan 22, 2008 2:48pm
Actual ad 
Close-up of neck area
I suspect all politicians, to some extent, are concerned with their personal appearance, but this example, from Texas' 22nd, is truly ridiculous.
Congressional candidate Dean Hrbacek appears slimmer than usual in a new campaign brochure because a photo of his head was affixed to the image of a different body.
While the mailer sent to voters this week by the former Sugar Land mayor says "Dean's record speaks for itself," his physique clearly does not.
The picture, presented as a true image of the candidate, is a computerized composite of Hrbacek's face and someone else's slimmer figure, in suit and tie, from neck to kneecaps.
Hrbacek's campaign manager conceded that the image is a fake, but said the candidate was too busy to have his actual picture taken for the mailing.
Oh my.
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Slow news day?
sugarland, tx, hmm. hometown of tom delay.
Eh, I dunno about this one. It's failing to rouse my inner rabble.
Got the picture from his mugshot at the Sugarland PD?
Really. This sounds like something only Repukelickins would care about.
Hey, I was fine with the Republican party until THIS story broke!! Yikes, what will they do next, lie about intelligence in order to push a war forward? I say we get them to stop now, before it is too late. :)
Image & Perception....the cornerstone of any Republican.
Substance & Integrity....haven't seen a Republican since the early 50s
Well, he's always heard the expression "empty suit."
And just had to try one on for size.
"Sorry, I was just too busy to honest."
~ Republican Motto
to be* honest.... /sigh
Well, gotta give them credit, they did a pretty good job. I'm just curious. What happened to the post about Keith and the worst people in the world? It was there and then it wasn't.
Seems one reason the market bounced way back up today is the rumor that the bond insurers will get a bailout.
LOL too busy to snap a pic but not too busy to scam money from the ignorant. This guy is a true republican.
OK,
this was on "Countdown" several days ago.....not a big deal then, not a big deal now.
Soliciting sex in a bathroom when you claim moral authority?...........................news.
Get golfing trips paid for by lobbyists when you claim fiscal responsibility...........news.
Setting up a fake news conference when you're pretending to be accountable.......news.
photoshopping a picture to make you look a few pounds lighter..........................eh.
I was too busy to be handsome, or even something approaching photogenic. Could someone please photoshop a new face for me?
I emailed this to you folks last week. No H/T to me? Pfffttttttttt.
bandit @ 13:
I actually like this story. If someone at the same level of the other party had done something this retarded, do you think it would've been laughed off, or blared over the loudspeakers?
More Photos
http://www.deanforcongress.com/photos
Eric Almighty @ 16:
Precisely! Faux, Drudge, AM hate radio et al would be screaming bloody murder with blaring headlines if a Dem was caught doing the same thing. The MSM would be covering this at the top of every hour over a 24 to 48 news cycle.
pissed off patricia @ 11:
No they didn't. I've done that kind of thing. It's TRIVIAL to do a MUCH better job. Just position the candidate-face-layer over the model-body-layer, set your eraser background color to "transparent," and erase all the places where the face-layer overlaps the shirt and tie underneath. That's "Tass Photoshop 101."
My siblings and I brought all the grandkids into Proex to get a portrait, but the photographer was so incompetent that none of the proofs were usable at all. So I scanned the proofs at home, brought up the light, contrast, and saturation on my sons who were in shadow; cut and pasted smiling faces from one proof onto eyes-closed faces on the other; and built a family portrait from scratch. I did a much better job than whoever cobbled together that brochure, and I'm just a guy with no particular Photoshop training.
But what do you expect from Republican tools, competence? I suppose you're right, it IS a good job, insofar as the head is only slightly out of scale to the body, and isn't upside-down.
in all fairness, if the people of suburban houston are to have someone representing them who represents them and their interests the closest, it appears they have their man.
OH NOES!!!! PHOTOSHOPZ!
I like this quote from the story...
"I think the voters ... are more concerned with the issues as opposed to pretty photo shoots."
Then why crop his head on a skinnier body?
News flash - photos of thinner bodies on mailers will NOT reduce postage!
God, I'm so glad I don't live in Texass anymore...
If only they could Photoshop a different brain into his head.
Weaseldog @ 17:
I like the hair that was scanned in on photo six. Must have been too busy to clean the scanner as well.
Someone needs to get the kidz on fark.com to go to work on that ad, and see what kind of body they can put under that head.
Even a photoshop n00b should be able to do a better job than the "official" photo.
Am I the only one that has never used photoshop? I guarantee I couldn't do a better job. :)
Houston is the fattest city in Texas. I'm surprised they didn't Photoshop him onto a fatter body.
Hrbacek’s campaign manager conceded that the image is a fake, but said the candidate was too busy to have his actual picture taken for the mailing.
So, they didn't have any stock photos of the guy lying around, is that what we're expected to believe. They couldn't call up his family and say, "Hey, you got a photo of him we can use??" This is the bullshit we're supposed to swallow? That he didn't have 5 minutes to get a photo taken, so they photoshopped his face onto somebody else's body? Jesus Christ! These guys even lie in their photographs!!
I don't think its a fake. I think its a real picture especially since all of the GOP are robots anyway. They simply detached Hrbacek's head and wired it to another robot body. His old body probably threw a gasket with all the lies the GOP tells so they had to find a replacement. :lol:
Someone needs to learn how to use the 'clone' tool better!
Or at LEAST erase to background image.
On the sliding scale of scummy political maneuvering though, this is lightweight stuff.
More silly than nefarious. Still dumb though.
This is the kinda work I do for a living. The crop job was really sloppy. Must of been a volunteer who made the flayer. Either that or they got in a hurry and just forgot to touch it up.
Joe O. @ 29:
Hrrmmm, have you been watching reruns of Red Dwarf?
It's so poorly done that I can't imagine it even mattering to anyone. It's kind of just this funny thing that can easily be explained away. We're not even just talking about something not being blended properly, we're talking about a whole portion of the neck sitting over the shirt.
If people don't think politicians of all backgrounds don't have Photoshop do things for them, they're pretty naive.
Weaseldog @ 32:
I can't say that I have ever seen Red Dwarf. I have seen many Republicans though and from what I can tell they are pretty much like robots spewing the same old thing and never leave the GOP script.
If that's not an analogy for how empty politician's heads are and how inter changeable they can be, I don't know what is.
"Red Dwarf"? I don't think he looks like Alberto Gonzales.
Lets assume the " too busy to do his job" story is true. If so he has a dilemma. He can stick with a truthful approach and just use a pic of his fat ass or he can fake it. He chose faking it. Now, why should those he chooses to hustle for votes not think he will do that again in his official capacity?
Too busy to be photographed? A politician! He only had time to have his head photographed! Also too lazy to check his copy and too cheap to hire a competent twelve year old to photoshop his stuff. Any speculation on whose body he snatched? This is a lighter-side-of-politics story. Unless, of course, it really isn't a photoshop job and he actually grafted his doughy republican head onto some unsuspecting and fit democrat.
Actually I think the Iraq war was the highest level of political vanity.
They were also apparently too busy to find someone to do good Photoshop work. Damn.
This is really sad! As a Graphic Designer in Houston, TX I am outraged at the deplorable Photoshop work! This is not representative of the skills of most Houston area designers.
Is this really a big deal? Are we going back to $400 hair cuts being news?
Too busy to have his photo taken, but not to busy to have a photo of just his head taken????
OMG! That's some crappy-ass Photoshop work. How humiliating. He coulda gimme fifty bucks and I'da done a much better job. In fifteen minutes.
And I'm an amateur.
Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy. That sort of shit makes me nuts. Unless the guy doing it wanted it to be caught.
If he'd had a nicely tailored dark suit with a faint pin stripe, a good well-fit shirt and a well knotted tie, he could've used his own bod. Unless we're talking Huckabee large.
The camera adds 10 pounds. I gotta wonder-how many cameras is the guy wearing?
SLOPPY!
What is someone else had their head put on a better looking" body: Would anyone say something?
First of all Id like to say that if a Democrat did this, im pretty sure noone would care.
Id also like to agree with most of the posters here who say that this is a non-story to the highest degree.
Finally, I have to ask...Does it take THAT much longer to get a photograph of your whole body than just your head?
Dr. Matt @ 18:
Well, my goal is to be anything other than the likes of drudge, faux, etc. I hate the "well they would do it so why shouldn't we" argument....I'd like to believe that we can be better than them and not feel it necessary to stoop to their level. Hell, I'll call BillO out on his loofah every day of the week.......I'm not saying that we can't make fun of stupid shit the repugs and their ilk do, this just doesn't rise above the 2nd grade level of calling someone a poopy-pants, it's not that scandalous and not that big of a deal....
Jesse Ventura used a body double, too, when he was running for governor. Only his body double had less clothing on in the ad.
I can put his head on ARNOLDS BODY
ha ha ha ha h ah ah a
Never mind the politician's party, never mind his vanity. What blows my mind is that the photo alteration is so amateurish.
Better to have given the task to a child.
I am a former resident of D22, and man is that place a corrupt shithole or what. After Tom Delay. The whole stupid effing write in BS of Shelly Sekkula Gibbs (whos everything I defaced whenever I could) couldn't piss me off more. The GOP could have supported Bob Smither (Libertarian), like I did and carried the first Libertarian in memory into the House. Instead we got bushdog Nick Lampson. Thanks voters of District 22. I know Lampson wants to appeal to people in this D22, but he wont get reelected anyway so why not show your colours as a democrat and take an anti-war position?
I'll bet the low-rent tool who did that job around the collar (just five more minutes in Photoshop and nobody would have known the difference) was paid in embezzled cash from the Iraq occupation funding.
Geez, even the pixel monkeys for the repugs are lazy hacks.
Someone clearly does not know how to cut and paste, otherwise they would have gotten away with this.
There are hardly any photos of this jerk on the internet, and not ONE photo that shows his REAL body. Does anyone have the REAL body, so we can compare this slim photo properly?
One question which intelligent Texas voters should be asking themselves right now is:
"If Hrbacek is willing to misrepresent himself and/or permit us to be misled about something as trivial as how much he weighs, what else might he be trying to misrepresent and/or permit us to be misled about?"
Right under the post about the news not being serious enough? This is not a big issue and I honestly could care less.
Wait a minute! Isn't that KATIE COURIC's CGI BODY!?
AshWilliams @ 58:
Who ever said the Crooks and Liars website was NEWS? This in an ENTERTAINMENT site, with political overtones. Sheesh...go bust the cajones of a REAL 'news' outlet.
That's actually him...he has a mask on...that's the overlapping skin, a mask!
I guess when you can't afford a $400 haircut you hire a photoshop 'expert' for $350 and let him make you look better.
Pericles @ 60:
Yeah, I know I sounded a bit harsh, but to be honest, I know that the "real" news networks won't deliver. So I've come to rely upon C&L for my daily politico for coming on three years. Guess it's just a misconception on my part. And also I haven't slept in a while which = muy cranky. But I really do LOVE C&L for what they've done.
The only reason I thought of John's previous post was that, from the perception of actual politics and not entertainment (yeah, it is pretty funny, I know), if we had total insight into all campaigns, it'd surprise me if absolutely any photos weren't doctored. Almost like a $300 Romney haircut ridiculing the "$400" Edwards (who rocked Letterman last night!) cut.
PS: I've come to realize in the very process of typing that I'm rambling and nitpicking and can't even figure out if I had an idea in my head in the first place. EGADS i suppose it's time for PLANET TERROR! yay! ...if only I can figure out how to play .mkv...
Jay Severin Has a Small Pen1s @ 62:
Hah! Exactly what I was thinking!
Alright, goodnight now
You know, for all the money most GOP shlubs are worth, you'd think they could pay a real designer for a better forgery. I use photoshop for a living and I can tell you when people buy shit like this: you've really got your work cut out for you.
Oooh look it's Michelle Malkin.
That is some sloppy photoshop.
Outsourced?
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