Taking It To The Blank

What's your take on the NYT pulling this shot of Gonzales' AG swearing-in ceremony from the file?

Does he ultimately look more credible or incredible next to O'Conner?  (And visually, how much is he "coming up short"  given the fact she's literally "upstage?") 

In putting Gonzales front and center, does it provide Bush some support in toning down the counterproductive harping of the far right?  (And, along those lines, is Gonzales primarily a decoy to flush out -- and, maybe begin to wear down -- the extremists on both sides?  Or, mostly the left side?)

Does the shot with Mom help establish the terms for another vacuous (flag, family, apple pie, up from the bootstraps, minority makes good) PR campaign?

Does the image accurately depict Bush sitting in the background and enjoying the mayhem, firmly entrenched in the stealth zone? 

What else are you reading here?

(Caption:  Alberto R. Gonzales being sworn in as attorney general earlier this year with President Bush, his mother, Maria Gonzales, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Mr. Gonzales had been the White House counsel in Mr. Bush's first term, and before that a judge on the Texas Supreme Court.)

(image: Doug Mills/The New York Times.  July 6, 2004 at nyt.com)

Comments

[Gasho]

This photo makes the whole Justice replacement process look like a forgone conclusion. O'conner's hand over Gonzales' heart, by way of introduction leaves out the whole debate and simply introduces the conclusion. The Times' decision to bring this photo out of the archives is downright irresponsible given this implication.

It is ironic that O'connor has this "here's what you get" look on her face, since she's the one who put Bush in office in 2000.

Gonzales looks like he just won the pin the tail on the donkey award at a birthday party -- and Bush looks thrilled to simply be taller than Mrs. Gonzales.

For such a serious event, this picture completely lacks any indication of gravity. Zero reference to the possible 'nuclear option' in Congress or any reference to the torture memos Gonzales so gleefully wrote up for Bush.

[mad]

Regarding what Gasho just wrote: Exactly, there is no gravity here.

What is up and what is down? We are floating in an unreal world where Alberto "Torture Memo" Gonzales is a shoo-in for a Justice slot......... instead of a slot in the World Court as a war criminal.

I do not know Justice O'Connor's face well enough to know what her expression means in the photo. But I would say that she is not too proud of the fact that she is swearing in Gonzales.

[kali yuga]

O'Connor is a whore bitch and this is her legacy:

She put a knife in the back of American democracy so Chicken George could steal an election and name her replacement. So anyone Bush puts on the bench, she puts on the bench.

Nothing else this cunt ever did or said matters.

[GKoutnik]

The picture seems bizarre to me even without the political implications. O'Connor - whose white hair I first thought was a powdered wig, giving her the look of a founding father - looks like she's gesturing to a set of cardboard cutouts. Bush looks like he's been Photoshopped into the picture. It's an unflattering, ambiguous and bizarre photo that should have been passed over even when it was news.

By the way, O'Connor is downstage of the other actors, not upstage. In previous centuries, many stages were raked, or tilted from a high point furthest from the audience ("up"stage) to a low point closest to the audience ("down"stage). "Upstage" is the dominant position (traditionally) because of this and (practically) because downstage actors have to turn away from the audience to face an upstage actor, therefore moving the audience's attention away from him/her and toward the upstage actor.

O'Connor, however, is not giving away her position - she's not attending to anyone else in the picture. She is gesturing with her upstage hand, a move which, on stage, can distance an actor from the rest of the cast on stage while establishing his/her power of position.

[MonsieurGonzo]

Justice - Are You Being Served ?

Gasho has really nailed this one, imho; and GKoutnik : "gesturing to a set of cardboard cutouts..." describes well the peculiar, 2-dimensional quality of the figures in this image! it is as if everything is compressed by long telephoto lens, yet somehow stretched in weird perspective; not unlike that effect achieved by Hitchcock in Vertigo.

no doubt the central theme of this image is the "handover" ~ as a retiring Justice O'Connor "hands over" Attorney General Gonzales to "her place" apparent on the SCOTUS.

the aforementioned lack of gravitas, weird 2-dimensional qualities, and entirely different set of facial expressions (again, re-inforcing the sense that the participants are not all there-there at the same event, and have been somehow 'cut out' from images of different times & places and pasted here to depict something, a ceremony that has never ocurred in reality) all do tell the savvy viewer: this is NOT what it appears to be...

...for WE know that sitting / retiring Justices have little, if anything whatsoever to do with their successors. But {sigh} many American citizens do not.

Regardless of how outraged we, or Justive O'Connor herself may be by this image: as propaganda, nothing more sophisticated than this is required to fool many Americans.

[James]

At first glance, I thought the hand was O'Connor's right hand, palm to camera, back to Gonzales, pushing him away. That's not right, of course, but it was my first impression. Her face seems so unexpressive that it's impossible to infer what she really thinks of Gonzales here.

[James]

Sorry - I guess that is her hand, not Gonzales' hand over his heart, as I believed when i wrote the above post.

[cj]

This just looks like a game show or Star Search to me, with O'Connor the host... Where's Paula......