The Internet was abuzz Tuesday morning about a Paul Krugman New York Times blog post illustrated with an image, into which a white, fluffy cat has been inserted, of President Obama and other high-level officials in the White House Situation Room during the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker
Some readers quickly realized that the image itself is from a 2011 Slate gag post called “Cats of War.”
Screenshot/Slate
(The Slate post was itself a riff on a popular Foreign Policy slideshow—of real pictures—called “War Dog.”)
Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in an email that the use of the cat photo was intentional—Krugman is a known cat guy—and since being posted it’s been updated with a link to Slate.
Update, 12:15 p.m.: Krugman has added a note to his post. “Yes, I know there’s a cat in the picture; I took it from Slate, ’The Cats of War,’ ” he writes. “I’ve used that image before, to lighten things up slightly. Apparently I didn’t succeed.”
