BAGnewsNotes

The Wimp Factor-y

As many of you know, it was pictorial nonsense like this in '04 that stimulated The BAG to adopt its current mission.

With honorary lifetime seats in the swiftboat, the visual media continues to pick at Kerry's bones.  In this case, however, the sallow, ducking, baggy-eyed, over-lit Senator is not just beaten up again, but offered up as the model for his potential wimp-successor.

It's not that "Obama is starting to look more like Kerry," however, so much as "The Factory" is starting up its own campaign to make it look that way.

The Democrats’ Wimp Factor - Hirsh
There They Go Again: Saturday's Installment of the NYTimes' Kerry Campaign Photo Coverage (Campaign '04 - BAGnewsNotes)
Times Still At It? (Sunday edition) (Campaign '04 - BAGnewsNotes)
Why The Long Face (Jan 31, 2006 - BAGnewsNotes)

(image: Dita Alangkara/AP. From: Newsweek. April 17, 2008. newsweek.com)

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Update: April 20, '08: More Kerrying On

Two days after Newsweek tied Obama to Kerry in their on-line lead under the headline "The Wimp Factor," they are back at it.

Forty-eight hours before the Pennsylvania primary, Newsweek reinforces the association with a home page feature titled: "The Surrogates."  In this case, Newsweek juxtaposes Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell with Kerry when the the logical pairing, giving the battle of Pennsylvania surrogates, would have paired Rendell with Obama's most prominent Pennsylvania advocate, Senator Bob Casey.

It's true that Kerry is campaigning this weekend for Obama in Western PA, targeting Catholic voters.  Still, he is only one of a handful of prominent surrogates stumping the state, and his effort has not been highlighted by any other major media.  In the meantime, Ted Kennedy and several others are also working the turf right now.

Looking at natural juxtapositions, this Sunday's news shows feature Ed Rendell vs. Bob Casey (Face the Nation); Mayor Michael Nutter vs. PA Representative Chaka Fattah as well as Bill Bradley for Obama vs. Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey (CNN’s “Late Edition”) and Dick Durbin (for Obama) vs. Charles Schumer (“Fox News Sunday”).

Visually, it's interesting how Rendell is shown in full declaration while Kerry stares into space with his mouth hidden beneath the title screen.  By the way, did I mention that the first article listed under the lead above is titled: "Can Obama Repel 'Swift Boat'-Style Attacks?"

(also, notice prominent Kerry-Obama pic leading Surrogates article: Obama or Clinton: Which Candidate Can Best Take On McCain? (Newsweek)
Obama: Can’t ‘Swift Boat’ Me (Newsweek)

(images: AP)

Your Turn: Seeds Of Iwo Jima

Iraq misdirection play?
Cruel joke on New Orleans?
Time for sacrifice yet?
Have a little war with your nostalgia.
It's always about winning, isn't it.
Flag fatigue.
Green movement on Viagra.
Why does America always have to plant things full grown?
Still running interference for Bush-Cheney-Rove global war paradigm.

Your thoughts?

How to Win the War on Global Warming (TIME)

(photo-illustration: Arthur Hochstein.  photo: Joe Rosenthal/AP.  TIME cover: Apr. 28, 2008)

Standard Operating Procedure

You look at a photograph, and you think you have a veridical piece of reality. And you see these famous photographs, these infamous photographs, that came out of Abu Ghraib, and you think, “This is despicable, blah, blah, blah,” and you look no further. I believe that no one did look much further.
...
I think that the photographs served as a cover-up as well as an exposé. That is one of the things that’s truly fascinating about them. They gull you into thinking that you know everything there is to know. This is the bad stuff—look at it; here’s the ocular proof; here’s the image.

-- Quotes from Errol Morris.  Interview with Michael Meyer in Columbia Journalism Review

What is stunning about Errol Morris's generative idea for his latest film, "Standard Operating Procedure," is the observation that everyone looked at the Abu Ghraib photos (and reacted in the extreme), but nobody really "looked into" them -- not to the extent one would typically attempt to ask and answer what is actually going on in them, why, how, and in what sequence or specific context.

In attempting to layer and infuse the images with dimensionality, the film pursues many approaches, including in-depth interviews and filmed re-enactments.  Regarding the latter, photographer Nubar Alexanian's photos of those reenactments are being touted to help impart more of a sense of knowing which viewers can then bring back to the original photographs.

In setting up such a cheap, soft-porn quality liaison between the "bad apples" (ignoring an overweight prisoner hanging on the blood-streaked, plywood background), I'm wondering if you feel this single image -- offering such a cinematic and dramatically paradoxical contrast -- lends more reality and context to the horrors themselves?

Recovering Reality: Errol Morris on Abu Ghraib (Morris - Meyer interview/CJR)
Standard Operating Procedure website
Sony SOR website - This site not only includes the trailer, but is also an extension of the film in literally applying context to the original images. (Sony Classics)
Exposure: The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib (a specific look at Sabrina Harman by Philip Gourevitch  and Errol Morris - The New Yorker)
Nubar Alexanian photos from set of SOR (Takepart.com)
Nubar.com

(image © Nubar Alexanian)

And, If You Happened To Have Missed Any Part Of Last Night's Clinton-Obama Pennsylvania Debate...

Sights And Symbols Of Silly Season: Lapel Edition

"So, it's on, but does it stay on?  What do you say, Tim?" (or Margaret, or Charlie).
"Well, Keith (or Chris, or Brian), since it was a gift, he can get mileage from putting it on, but then, staying true to his "false patriotism" position, he can also take it off again."
"Well Joe, We'll have to see what FOX has to say."
"Did you say FOX, David?  Are they still on the air?"

Yes, stay tuned.

Obama dons flag pin once again (CNN)
Obama Dropped Flag Pin in War Statement (ABC)

(screen shots: CNN)

Your Turn: Laying It Down For Christ, New Heroes

With the Pope currently doing the rounds, the NYT has a piece this AM about a new Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York recruiting effort encouraging men to join the priesthood.  This image comes from a slideshow featuring six posters for the campaign. 

Besides the tag line "The World Needs Heroes," posters #1 and #5 seem to be borrowing from 9/11, and the support and mentoring role priests played throughout the crisis.  Poster #2 is more abstract and symbolic.  It's a black-and-white image of priests stepping into a gritty city crosswalk with words like "FATHER," "DESTINY," etc. added.  What attracted my eye was the black gash that severs the white horizontal painted lines, reflective, it seems, of how priests have crossed the line of purity and equality as a result of long term and widespread sex abuse.

The poster I was most interested in, however, was the one above.  I'm wondering how you read it, and whether you see any 9/11 tie-in here as well?

Calling New Priests: A selection of marketing posters from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York to attract students to the priesthood. (NYT slide show)
Facing Decline, an Effort to Market the Priesthood (accompanying article - NYT)
wikipedia image: "Mychal Judge Pieta" + Judge wikipedia entry

(poster: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York via nytimes.com)

Don't Leave Me, Daddy. (9/11, 9/11)

(click on image to see true size, as published in WAPO photo gallery)

I can't help contrasting this shot in today's WAPO Day in Photos with the White House photo gallery's endless wallpaper of military spouses as loyal, brave and beaming.

Sure, it's just one shot.  But the symbolism here conveys a fundamental erosion of the "stiff upper lip."  As well, it speaks -- in the media sphere --  to the kind of unsustainable emotional strain on our troops that military officials have been warning of more urgently lately.  (As a metaphor, perhaps the brick wall also has something to contribute on that point.)

According to the caption, we see a military wife comforting her twins this past Saturday as their father leaves home for his second deployment to Iraq.  I don't know how old these children were when their father shipped out the first time.  With the occupation entering its sixth year, however, these two are likely apprehending the reality of this mindless war in a deeper way that they were before.

Still, there's an aspect of the photo, and the boy, that troubles me far more than the tragic expressiveness -- the "come back;  touch me;  don't go" -- of the boy's hand.

What I'm referring to is the prominent emblem on the boy's shirt.  After doing a little searching, I discovered it's a patch for F.D.N.Y. Hazardous Materials Company #1 (which I found on a site called fallenbrothers.com).  I certainly feel for the moment.  At the same time, however, this emblem on the boy, as part of a heart-tugging image offered for national consumption by the Washington Post, seems like a blasphemous display as both family and media further perpetuate the outlandish linkage between Iraq and 9/11.

... Oh, and did I mention that the day's WAPO gallery was sponsored by a web commercial for the U.S. Air Force, leading off with an image of the Pentagon and the line: "This building is going to be attacked 3 million times today?"

Washington Post Day in Photos April 14, 2008

(image: Joseph Kaczmarek/AP.  April 12, 2008.  Philadelphia.  washingtonpost.com)

Black Arts

(click for full size)

Did you happen to notice yesterday's NYT profile on Charlie Black, McCain's campaign mastermind?

There's an ironic, but near-imperceptible element buried in the NYT photo of the man who was Lee Atwater's mentor, as well as political consultant to Blackwater, foreign dictators, and the like.  If you expand the image above, you might see it.  Otherwise, it's clearer in the print edition.  I've blown up the key element right here.

‘Steady Hand’ for the G.O.P. Guides McCain on a New Path (NYT)

(image: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. 2008. South Carolina.  nytimes.com)