A poster that featured Kamala Harris in Eagles gear with a caption that read, “Kamala, official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles,” was spotted at a Philadelphia bus stop and later proven to be forged last week.
The artist who took credit for the piece, Philadelphia native Winston Tseng, released a statement on Monday claiming the poster was supposed to be a satirical piece and never meant to be put up in a public space. He denied any knowledge of how it ended up there.
“The absurd poster of Kamala Harris wearing an Eagles helmet is my artwork, but I don’t know how it ended up at bus stops in Philadelphia,” Tseng wrote.
Tseng claims that the piece was not meant to be promotional for the Harris campaign when he designed it. Instead, it was meant to satirize the concept of celebrity or sports entities giving endorsements of political candidates as a whole.
“My work uses brands and advertising to communicate societal issues. On one level, the poster is a parody of the ads we see along I-95 promoting the ‘official beer’ or the ‘official accounting firm of the Philadelphia Eagles.’ But the title of this work is ‘Political Endorsement,’ and that’s the issue at hand,” Tseng said. “Why the f— do we care who Hulk Hogan or some corporation endorses? Yet here we are, and I think the strong reaction we’ve seen to this satirical endorsement is a reflection of our times.”
The posters were initially spotted during the first two days of September on 16th and Spring Garden streets, 18th Street and JFK Boulevard, and 34th and Walnut streets in Philadelphia. The poster pictured below at 16th and Spring Garden streets was later removed last Monday afternoon.
However, the posters also had a URL printed underneath the caption, which directed to an Eagles voting website that shows past Pennsylvania and New Jersey primary election voting deadlines from the spring. It also provided links for first-time voters, polling locations, and guidelines on voting registration and requesting a ballot.
Tseng has also previously posted photos of his designed posters in which he appropriated a company’s official brand at Philadelphia bus stops, including a Ben & Jerry’s-themed poster of President Biden eating an ice cream cone, with the caption “Rocky Road to Democracy.”
Tseng has also posted a photo of one of his posters that featured former president Trump, in which he appropriated the Pepto Bismol brand. That poster showed Trump against a white background with the text: “Nausea, heartburn, insurrection, upset stomach, diarrhea.
Meanwhile, the Harris Eagles posters came just one week before the presidential debate between Harris and Trump, at the National Constitution Center Tuesday night in Philadelphia, which will be broadcast on ABC.
The posters garnered a strong reaction out of one Philadelphia resident, identified by FOX 29 as Joe from South Philly. The man took it upon himself to cover up the bus station posters with printed-out screenshots of the Eagles’ official statement decrying the posters as counterfeit.
“My concern here is not that someone is expressing an opinion, which everyone is entitled to do, but this person is lying to everyone that comes and uses this stop. That’s what I’m very concerned about — the fact that they’re spreading lies that the Philadelphia Eagles endorsed Kamala Harris as a candidate for president in the United States,” Joe said. “We all know that Philadelphia’s the battleground for Pennsylvania, and these types of lies are things that prevent honesty in the election process.”
A city spokesperson told NBC Philadelphia that someone must have broken into a contained space where bus station posters are stored, and replaced the ones that were in there with the counterfeit Harris endorsement posters.
“This was not a digital breach; whomever is responsible for the illegally placed posters, broke into the securely covered shelter ad space and somehow put the posters in the space. Intersection has advised the City’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) that they plan to conduct a full inventory tomorrow of all bus shelters, and remove any illegal posters. The City has a process to review all bus shelter ads but this, again, was not a digital ad.”
Pennsylvania could be the “tipping point” in the 2024 presidential election, according to electoral and polling analysis. Betting favorites with Harris taking Pennsylvania showed the vice president winning 270 electoral votes compared to Donald Trump’s 268, but if Trump were to win the commonwealth, that would put him at 287 electoral votes to Harris’ 251.
Polls in the state have showed Trump gaining ground and closing Harris’ previous lead in the state.
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