BAGnewsNotes

Your Turn: By The Book

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A few questions:

1.  Beyond the Chavez personality, the U.N. back drop and the Chomsky name, how much more thought might have gone into the staging of this image, down to the book edition (with the presence of the globe and the U.S. flag), as well as possible physical references to Bush, including the power suit, the lapel pin, and the red-for-Republican (as well as "revolutionary") tie? 

2.  To what extent are figures like Chavez romanticized by the press (and thus, used for entertainment) for their radical chic?  (See NYT article and accompanying slide show.)

3.  To what extent was this stunt effective in leveraging the American left?  And if the left didn't bite, did the media partly jump on the image (as expected by the Chavez people?) for the idea that they would?   

4.  How much is this image about the (potentially growing) influence and political role of books? 

Just looking at the last week of BAG posts, books have played a significant underlying role in making, shaping or even impeding the news.  Musharraf, for example, refused to back up a charge against Bush so as not to compromise his book coming out.  (Bush's response?  "Read the book.")  Newsweek dropped its Afghanistan cover story in the U.S. in order to promote the new Leibovitz book.  And just in today's headlines, the White House is scrambling to respond to charges arising from “State of Denial,” Robert Woodward's new book. 

(By the way, this image turned into a huge boon for one of Chomsky's lesser sellers.)

5.  Having looked at this pic off-and-on for about a week, I kept wondering: Why did the photo editors run it so wide?  I find the effect very powerful, but can't really say why.

If you're a regular reader but haven't commented before, I would especially encourage you to jump in! 

(hat tip: VR)

(image: Raimin Talaie/Bloomberg News.  New York.  published September 23, 2006.  nyt.com.)

With Deep Apologies To Susan Sontag

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Oh, if this story was only about Afghanistan....

Many of you emailed me about Newsweek ditching the "Losing Afghanistan" cover on this week's American edition.  Most also directed me to the incriminating screen shot from Newsweek's site juxtaposing the cover image for three continents with the one for the U.S.

As to the Afghan downgrade specifically, I have little to add to the excellent American Journalism Review piece discussing how "the real 9/11 war" has been neglected by American media (and domestic magazine covers).  What wasn't much examined in all this, however, was the state-side cover (and cover story) Newsweek ran instead.

I found it incredibly revealing that Newsweek would torpedo the Afghanistan story in favor of a profile of star photographer, Annie Leibovitz.  What it signifies, in a larger sense, is how political reporting (far beyond Newsweek) has become obsessed with form.

Last Line Of Defense

Under aggressive questioning, Snow appeared to struggle at times, parsing the [National Intelligence Estimate's] language and - grasping for a proper interpretation - frequently simply reading it to reporters.  --IHT (Link).  9/28/06

So, the fish stinks from the head.  Update:  5:26 EST.  Looking back at this, I realize my comment was completely obscure.  I just found the photo -- and the press conference -- particularly telling.  Having no comeback for the document, it sounded like the White House parsing what "is" means.  Beyond that, it seemed somehow fitting that a President who reads most of what he says has now reduced his once-glib press secretary to the same constraint.

(image: Ron Edmonds/AP.  September 27, 2006.  Washington.  Via YahooNews)

'06 Race In Single Digits

I came down too hard on Bill Clinton yesterday.

His public thrashing of FOX and Chris Wallace on Sunday has proven quite effective.  And I'm not say that because of the invigoration of the netroots.  It's because of how the blow to an already off-balance White House is playing out in the (visual) words and pictures.

In the past, the high command would probably have paid short shrift.  Clinton made such a forceful, clear, unequivocal and resonant point about how now-suspect Bush, Cheney and Rice ignored bin Ladin, however, it couldn't go unchallenged.

Because Clinton was emphatic about the warnings of Richard Clarke (and, by implication, Condi's brush off of a reputable adviser), Rice had no choice but to respond immediately.  Using the (Fox/Murdoch sister outlet) New York Post as her venue, however, was unusually cheap.  Situating herself in Clinton's back yard, putting on a red suit, trying her uneven best to look authoritative, and attempting to employ tabloid hysteria to match Clinton's true outrage came off, by contrast, as typically phony Administration sentiment.  (In the picture with the article, notice how Condi isn't even making eye contact with the camera.) 

(Paper tigers, that's what/who Clinton revealed.  Paper tigers.)

But the more significant place to study the reaction, of course, was with Bush.

Bill Clinton: Sleeping Giant

I had seven or eight carefully selected screen shots to share with you featuring Clinton with his Irish up.  But really, is there a more telling frame than this?

I'm was as gratified as anybody to see Clinton stand up to Fox, Chris Wallace, ABC, the neocons, the whole cabal.  The only problem is, where has he been all this time, and where is he going to be tomorrow, and the next day?  On the politics, I completely agree with Arianna Huffington and Matt Stoler about the Fox News Sunday Clinton interview/ambush.  Clinton may have performed admirably, but he has otherwise been MIA on the GWOT since he left office.

Arianna suggests WJC could learn something by watching the video of the interview a couple of times.  Well, Clinton could watch this video a hundred times and there's still no way he would learn anything.  Bubba's fatal, and ultimately masochistic flaw is that he desperately needs to be loved by everybody.  The problem -- expressed at the personal level -- killed him politically, and the problem -- manifest at the political level -- is hurting us both ways.

Having read quite a few posts about the interview, along with dozens and dozens of excerpts, what I haven't seen is the quote that jumped out for me.  It was near the end of the lecture/diatribe when Clinton interjected:

"I've never criticized President Bush, and I don't think it is useful."

If you believe Clinton was doing his bit for the party, that conclusion just doesn't fit with the man.  Clinton was personally attacked and he fought back.  But there's a world of difference between standing up for your party, and getting hot in defense of your own name.

Video clip (via think progress) here.

(image: Fox News Sunday via thinkprogress.  September 24, 2006.)

The Task At Hand

Because November's trend line is not quite clear, the political visuals are also hard to read.

Adam Nagourney's article in Sunday's NYT Mag, an extended profile of Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, reveals a haggard and frustrated man.  Citing his huge effort to bring blacks and latinos into the party, Mehlman is described as profoundly disillusioned over the way Bush and Katrina spoiled it.  The write-up also hints at friction between Mehlman and Rove over authority, as well as bragging rights for the Bush string of victories.

On the other hand, the article also emphasizes Mehlman's intense energy, as well as his still far superior Republican get-out-the-vote apparatus.  A parallel Week In Review piece, also by Nagourney, emphasizes how the Repub campaign committee has raised more money and, at the steering level, remains much more unified then the Dems.

On first pass, an image like this is a total send up.  With the pasted on smile, the background reminiscent of cheap wood panelling, and the gargantuan hand, it plays like a paean to the used-car salesman.  Still, it's a portrait, and could likely have been Mehlman's idea.  In that's case, this is nothing more than an encapsulation of hard knuckled Republican tenacity.

It will be interesting to revisit this shot in November.  Mehlman could end up the snake-oil pitchman, having crashed to earth after an usual stretch of luck.  On the other hand, he might well have distinguish himself as the man who slapped enough backs, greased enough skids, and "converted enough of the demographic" to have pulled things out.

(image: Brent Humphreys/Redux for The New York Times.  September 24, 2006.  nyt.com.)

POW! (Not.)

While American men and women are spilling real blood in Iraq and Afghanistan, the GWOT has devolved into a clown show.

For combined idiocy and duplicity, this week was a classic.  The setting was Pervez Musharraf's visit to Washington.  The background was Bush's off-script comment last week indicating the U.S. might forsake Pakistani sovereignty to hunt for bin Ladin.  The episode featured the political retaliation, involving Islamabad -- immediately before Musharraf's meeting with Bush -- exposing the Administration's threat, immediately after 9/11, to "bomb Pakistan back into the stone age."

The situation sent the three major players running for cover.

Richard Armitage, who delivered the threat, claimed it never was that blatant.  The file photo above, however, has been circulating for days as the embodiment of the fist in Musharraf's face.  If the heavy-handedness was appropriate at the time, it now plays like the kind of intimidation and bullying that causes the Administration to poison every diplomatic well.

Then we have these real life caricatures from the joint press conference.

In a brilliant example of how the terror war's big winner is the corporate state, Musharraf displayed feigned outrage, but refused to elaborate on the "stone age" charge because he has a book coming out shortly, and his (American) publisher wouldn't let him steal any thunder!  (I can hardly write this without thinking I'm kidding.)

As for Bush? (Please, someone issue an overdone hunching and gesticulation alert.)  He employed the famous "stupidity defense," claiming he first read about the threat last week in the newspaper.

... And we thought he didn't read the paper.

(image 1: Toru Yamanaka/AFP.  2005.  Via YahooNews.  image 2:  J. Scott Applewhite/A.P.  Washington.  September 22, 2006. Via YahooNews.)

Yo, Whacko!

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I may not be a big Pelosi fan, but this caption -- running on YahooNews -- is complete b.s.  (Notice how the rip is accentuated by reference to a "lawmaker," rather than House Minority Leader.)

I mean, could you imagine a Hastert pic showing up tomorrow with this chicken scratch: 

The US Congress will retain its radical makeup if incumbent Republicans win November's midterm election. Abramoff benefactor and Republican lawmaker Dennis Hastert, representing a "hayseed" district in north Illinois, seen here in June 2006, will set the agenda.  (AFP/Getty Images/File)

And while I'm at it, there was also this shot one pic away from the one above.  That caption read:  South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, center, walks with House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill, right, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., left, after their meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2006.

Walks with?

(image 1: APF/Getty Images/file.  Via Yahoo News.  linked image: Charles Dharapak/A.P.  September 13, 2006. Via YahooNews)

A Work In Progress

Williams: You are on the cover of Time magazine here in the United States and around the world. Inside, it says, "A Date with a Dangerous Mind."  Why do you think they think you have a dangerous mind?  Do you?

Ahmadinejad: You should hear what I have to say, and then be the judge of that. I think that if people have a hard time accepting the logic and fact, they should not actually accuse others. The picture is an attempt to darken my face a lot. I think it actually shows me much younger than what I am. The first page, the cover.

Williams: Oh, the cover?

Ahmadinejad: This one? The cover page. Oh, it's really…

Williams: You approve?

Ahmadinejad: …questionable. It's darkened me. And also much — it looks much younger than what I am.

-- Brian Williams/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad interview.  Sept. 20, 2006.

Of course it's darkened you and made you younger, AA.  Because the title (a sickeningly insane, Administration-pandering throwback to Gulf War fever) not only refers to the story inside the mag, but to your photo-illustration.  That war would look like an attack, once again, on a single figure, a cartoon --without regard for a people or country.

Whether intentional or not, this illustration calls up an effect, popular in commercials and films lately, turning actors and settings into their animated equivalents.  The method engages the viewer through its novelty, as well as the task of completing the bridge between the animation and reality inside one's own head. (I'm assuming the marketing people believe the "fleshing out" also leads to greater story or sales "buy in.")

It's telling how Ahmadinejad is no longer real, but isn't yet a cartoon.  (Only from the neck down is he's a finished character.)  This suggests two things.  First, in spite of the intense effort to flatten him out, there remains a thoughtful interest in understanding who this guy is, and how much of a threat he might actually represent.  (That may be why his body is converted, but head isn't there yet.)

Second, it suggests that the job of the Administration -- to turn AA into a total cartoon villain -- is coming along well, but remains a work in progress.

(hat tip: JR)

(photo-illustration: unattributed.  TIME.  Sep. 25, 2006.  Cover.)

All The Equivalence That Fits To Print

Digby link.  NYT story.

(images: Richard Perry/The New York Times.  New York.  September 19, 2006.  nyt.com)