BAGnewsNotes

Middle East 101

It's hard to see how Bush helps his cause in attacking Obama when the WH posts shots like this.  Captured at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem on Friday, the photo -- if attempting to demonstrate cultural and historical curiosity --  has the feeling of Middle East 101.

Accordingly, the pic not only reinforces Dubya's geopolitical shortcomings, but lends weight to Obama's counter, which is that the Bush foreign policy is purely naïve.

Bush Assails ‘Appeasement,’ Touching Off Storm (NYT)
Obama Says Bush and McCain Are ‘Fear Mongering’ (NYT)
Bush Saudi Arabia/Israel White House photo gallery (5/16/08)

(image:  Joyce N. Boghosian/White House.  Jerusalem Friday, May 16, 2008.  caption: President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush listen to Director Amanda Weiss as they tour the Bible Lands Museum. The museum illustrates the cultures of all the peoples mentioned in the Bible – from Egypt eastwards across the Fertile Crescent to Afghanistan, and from Nubia north to the Caucasian mountains. whitehouse.gov)

Service Entrance

I see this as is one of the negative consequences of Hillary riding it out till the end.

Hanging this insignia on her is pretty harsh, the juxtaposition -- "your shift is up!" -- a cruel play on the politician as public servant.  As well, the fact she's caught unaware this way lends a flat-out paparazzi feeling here.

It's also the kind of pic that will (cheaply) incite the more hardened partisan.  To the Hill-raiser, it's a total cheap shot, but to the Obamaniac, she brought it upon herself.

h/t: Chris

(image: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.  Washington.  May 14, 2008. caption: Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton departs from the service entrance after a reception on Capitol Hill.  via YahooNews)

Your Turn: McCain's Stowaway

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I'm curious how you read  this shot that ran on the AP wire about two weeks ago.

It's a scene aboard Air McCain, with Mac doing his customary press schmoozing.   Coincident to that, we have Arianna Huffington doing her cable news thing on the small screen.  The way she physically parallels McCain in the image is interesting, as is her proximity and relationship to the (main stream) reporters.  (By the way, this shot preceded the firestorm Huffington started over McCain's 2000 presidential vote by three days.)

I especially like how the image captures the different political platforms and "talk streams" in play this year, not to mention Huffington's tenacity in, once again (see video), finding her way onto McCain's radar.

(image Mary Altaffer/AP.  Phoenix. May 2, 2008)

Obama-Edwards: Just A Convention(al) Photo

Beyond the smart timing -- a day after the washout in W. Virginia -- it's hard to believe the true blue O-team wasn't playing for this exact pose.

Besides stoking the fantasies of those working class Edwards fans (are you looking, Kentucky?), the campaign even got Drudge, if you can believe it, to deliver the money caption.

Note:  I'm in NYC this week attending the NYPhoto Festival as well as the VII agency seminar, so I might be a bit briefer over the next few days.

Ex-Rival Edwards Throws His Support to Obama (NYT)
Why Did John Edwards Endorse Obama Today? Thread V (Talk Left)

(image: Jeff Haynes/Reuters. Grand Rapids, Michigan, May 14, 2008. via YahooNews)

Hung Over In Mississippi

On one hand, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill newswire shot.  For an Administration that has made its name on the strategic use of signs, slogans and symbolism, however, I think it's cleverly fateful.

The pic was shot Monday, the day before the GOP -- running hard against Obama in Mississippi (and hitting all the racial keys) -- lost still another special Congressional election.

You could say that the fact Davis lost to Childers -- after the Administration has so damaged the party -- can be directly hung over Cheney's head.  Looked at dimensionally, with the stars-and-stripe behind the sign, the photo also suggests that while Cheney/Bush continue to soak up the limelight, the '08 Republican slate -- in the fuzzy state that it is -- is now awkwardly caught between the Administration and the republic.

Democrats Capture Deep-Red Mississippi House Seat (TPM)

Republican Election Losses Stir Fall Fears (NYT)

(image: Rogelio V. Solis/AP.  Southaven, Miss. May 12, 2008)

I'm Sure Smirky's Golf Game Wasn't That Hard To Cut Loose

(before de Mello)

(after de Mello)

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

-- Bush Says He's Not A Golfer In Wartime (WAPO - May 14, 2008)

In light of the disclosure above, I think most people will look at this White House shot from May 5, 2007 and simply make the argument that Bush views golf as a sport and cycling as physical fitness.  That was, after all, the circumstance of this White House pic.

Knowing Bush, however, and the avid biker he's become (1, 2), I think the reason he has forsaken golf is not because he feels it's inappropriate so much as because of the immediate shame he felt having been caught on the golf course at the wrong moment.

As WAPO goes on:

Bush said he decided to stop playing golf on Aug. 19, 2003, when a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others.

He said he received word of the attack while playing golf during a stay at the family ranch near Crawford, Tex. Press reports at the time indicate he took the call from Condoleezza Rice, then his national security adviser.

"They pulled me off the golf course, and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do," Bush said in yesterday's interview.

Just like he never felt any need for collective sacrifice, it is just not in Bush's make-up to have made this decision in the broader context of "the appropriate behavior to set in wartime."  (If that was the case, then how would one explain the multitude of examples -- such as this one or this one -- where Bush, in the most public of wartime settings, has acted like a complete goof ball?)

No, being the concrete and stubborn guy he is, there just is not much difference in Bush's cocky pre-war, adolescent manner and the wartime manner he brings to everything, including replacement forms of recreation, such as fishing and biking.  It's the same smirky smirk.

Perhaps the jolt he received actually broke through Dubya's otherwise impermeable wall of denial.  Between truly examining his larger, gung-ho attitude toward the war, however, and adopting the gesture (just between him and himself) of jettisoning his golf game, I'm sure the golf wasn't that hard to cut loose.

(image 1: J. Scott Applewhite -- AP via WAPO.  image 2: Joyce Boghosian/White House. May 5, 2007.  Beltsville, Md. whitehouse.gov)

The West Virginia Numbers

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Heading into today's primary in W. Virginia, the focus in the 'sphere has been on Appalachia, race and demographics.  Steve Benen's post ("Why will Obama get trounced in West Virginia and Kentucky?") does a nice round-up looking at poll numbers, as well as leading pieces by George Packer, the LAT and Jerome Singer.  And then, there's this extended geographic analysis by DHinMI at DKos which argues that Obama's so-called problem with white working class voters might have a lot more to do with that swath of America known as Appalachia.

With this kind of focus, it's hard not to look at the newswire images of Clinton and Obama in West Virginia and not to attend to the racial breakdown. 

In a particularly symbolic visual, NYT photographer Stephen Crowley captured this shot at Tudor's Biscuit World in Charleston.  In the photo, Hillary Clinton heads into the restaurant for a photo op with Evelyn Keener, 91, who is waiting with a copy of Clinton's autobiography.  At the same time, the picture captures a black couple at the next table, the woman wearing an Obama 08 jersey.  (Afterward, as you can see in this AP shot by Elise Amendola, Clinton has a word with, and also a gander at the presidential endorsement of an embarrassed Doris Smith who said she had no idea Clinton was going to be there.)

Still, I found the image above (from yesterday's Clinton rally at a gym at the Fairmont, West Virginia airport) that much more effective in speaking to the demographics.  In this case, it was not just the crowd ratio I found compelling, or the social spacing, or the body language of the Obama supporters, but the element of the numbered bleacher seats. 

(image: unattributed.  Getty Images by AFP. Fairmont, West Virginia. May 12, 2008. via daylife.com)

Jenna's Blessed Wedding

Yes, thanks for the messages about Jenna's wedding.

The setting sun, combined with GDub on the periphery, combined with the wise (and, perhaps, only) choice of holding the wedding at 28%'s retirement home picks up on the sense that Bush can't get out of D.C. fast enough.

I also agree, the scale of the cross is very weird.  Does anyone know if it's now a permanent fixture of the "Prairie Chapel Ranch?"  (If nothing else, it's surely a visual vestige of the born-again nonsense -- and church vs. state blurring -- the country has had to put up with for the good part of a decade.)

Anyway, here's the full White House slide show.  Hope they had a private photographer, also, and the pics weren't all on the taxpayer's nickel.

Your Turn: Indiana

This was shot about a week ago at a Clinton rally at Indiana Tech.  It makes me think how, over the past four or five months, I've tried to remain more or less impartial in the Democratic race, and how I seem to have lost that battle of late.

I guess the children are standing in front of a window?  I like how it splits between inside and outside, pink and green, child and adult, female and male, emotional versus architectural. 

Mostly though, I'm interested in all you see here. 

(Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times.  May 2008.  Indiana.  nytimes.com)