Atlas Shrug
With all the harsh words leading up to the Bush-Putin face-off, I was just itching for a tension-packed visual to get a handle on. Instead, however, the newswires have been mostly filled with glad handing, the two warheads bending over backward not to make the other look bad. If...
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Ranch on the Side
Since entering office, Dubya has made the biggest deal about who does and doesn’t get the Crawford invite. In viewing the images out of the dude’s ranch, however, I’m always interested in how the White House PR operation scripts the setting and story line for each guest. ...
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I'll Gladly Pay You in Forty or Fifty Years For a Hamburger Today
Last time we checked in with the road show, George Bush was in Iowa (Dispatch from Cedar Rapids – link). This time, it’s Columbia, South Carolina. If you read the last dispatch, you know I’m big on the theory that “W” has been on autopilot. (In addition, he seems...
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Driving the Process
The White House press operation did a pretty good job stage managing George Bush’s meeting with Ariel Sharon on Monday. Besides a series of photos released by the Israeli press office, the general media was only allowed to take pictures from a distance during the leader’s joint press conference. ...
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Kurds on the Bus
I just don’t understand the Iraq coverage. Perhaps all those images of stained fingers waving in the air created the sense that democracy was “a done deal.” For whatever reason, however, the press seems to have spent the last nine weeks back under the spell of “Mission Accomplished.” I’m...
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The Top Story
There are at least three ways to look at this photo that appeared last Saturday in the NYT. You could try and figure out where Bush’s head is at. You could draw inferences about the mood, creativity or bias of the guy who took the picture. Or, you could...
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Dispatch from Cedar Rapids
The emotional violence from the latest round of right wing rampaging has left me feeling a little rough this hour. (By the way, has the soul of Jesse Jackson turned up anywhere?) So, maybe this is not the best time to bring Dubya back onto the BAG’s radar screen. ...
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Laura's New Curtains
In Michael Kimmelman’s front page NYT review of “The Gates,” he talks about the operating philosophy of Olmsted and Christo. Specifically, he mentions Olmsted’s idea of Central Park as a place of “dignity for the masses,” and Christo’s utopian vision of “art for Everyman.” With this spirit clearly in...
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State of the Union Show
I know everybody’s atwitter about the brilliantly executed SOTU moment in which Janet Norwood, the mother from Pflugerville who lost her son Byron in Iraq, embraced Safia Taleb al-Suhail, the women from Iraqi and victim of the Saddam regime, who had just voted in her country’s election. Even before...
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Bush At The Barber
(click for larger version) There are a number of things I find interesting about this photo (from a NYTimes Inauguration slide show). I find it interesting that the people in the shop (who, in reality, are in the foreground), have been displaced to the background by the president. I...
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Show of Support
It was if, for one day, the campaign was still on. George Bush, the war President, had come to Camp Pendleton in California to rally the troops. The result, if you look over the major newspapers and wire services, were dramatic images of the president from the back, from...
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Lend Your Wit To The BAG! “Whoops, I Thought You Said OPEC!”
A reader, Mike, sent me this great image. I was hoping some of you might help supply a caption. I’ll take the one that sounds the most clever and rename the post with it on Wednesday night. (I had a possibility or two in mind, which I will add...
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And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
If you think you’re going to see more pictures of Bush getting squeezed or marginalized anytime soon, you’re fooling yourself. If “W” took a back seat last week at the ceremonies for the Clinton library, he otherwise spent time moving things out of his way. The past week was...
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Bush … For a Day
If Bush wins, he’ll be his old self again tomorrow. For today, however, facing the prospect of defeat, Bush is displaying a real humanity. It’s a tragedy (for him, but more so, for the country and the world) that he has been unable to access anything close the past...
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Leading Photos: This Guy’s a Real Vacuum Case
The more of these front page photos I study, the more I come to admire the editorial ingenuity of the NYTimes. Even if they run with the day’s leading shot, they hardly ever use the most stage-managed version. Instead, if they have the choice, they tend to go with...
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