More On The Obama Front

I know my last post dealt with TIME finding the Obama campaign “reaching” last week.

This slap is even harder, however, illustrating how the right-wing noise machine is now kicking into high gear.  The screen grab above comes from TIME.com’s “Quote of the Day” section.  As of this writing, it is also featured on their home page.

So the breaking news is that Obama has decided to quit wearing his American flag lapel pin, right?

Well, not exactly.  As Media Matters explains, a minor news station in Cedar Rapids last week asked Obama why he wasn’t wearing a flag pin.  Obama explained he had stopped wearing one after 9/11, considering the ritual a hollow show of patriotism.  The next day, however, after AP ran a headline implying Obama had just made the decision, Drudge grabbed it up, shouting out it out in the same context to the mainstream masses (and the beltway media).

Since that was Thursday, it took all of one day for the piece above to pop up on TIME.

Swallowing Matt’s Kool-Aid, what a TIME-ly gift to the Swift Boat set.  Beyond the journalistic delinquency, itself, however, let’s consider the visual dynamics.  First, could you have found a more evidentiary shot of Barack’s long left lapel?  In a variation on the “don’t think of an elephant” trick, the coat suddenly look as pin-lessly empty and  lonely as an unbranded coat could be.  And that’s not to mention that expression, which — colluding with the right-wing spin — makes it look like Obama thinks patriotism itself is below him somehow.

(image: Alan Diaz / AP.  Published Friday, Oct. 05, 2007.  time.com)