A Crude Salute
In the midst of the U.S. occupation of oil-rich Iraq (initiated under false pretenses), conservatives obviously don't get the irony of having their presidential nominee and wife billboarding militarism while standing next to an oil derrick.
Continue Reading
McCain's Uppity Gym Rat
In my "ObamaPhobia" talk at NetrootsNation, I detailed a pattern of negative media coverage built around racist stereotypes as well as false rumors of Obama as a closet Muslim. My focus, of course, was on how this framing plays out at the visual level. In McCain's latest attack...
Continue Reading
The Trip: When Obama Became Acting President
it takes little-to-nothing to imagine Obama, the C.I.C., parked in the center of the action, Vice President Hagel fighting a little jet lag and Secretary of State Reed telling Petraeus (and the about-to-be furloughed Mr. Crocker) how it's going to be.
Continue Reading
The Trip: Let's Get Small
Reprising Hillary Clinton's "tastes great, less filling" attack narrative, the news analysis headlined "Obama, Vague on Issues, Pleases Crowds in Europe" rolls out a litany of quotes from Europeans critical of Obama, matched by a laundry list of subjects Obama's Tiergarten speech seemingly failed to tackle more clearly, from...
Continue Reading
Fudge Haus
If the strategy of the day was to emphasize McCain's ability, evoking a German setting, to successfully engage 199,990 fewer people than Obama captivated in Berlin, the event, plus the photo, was a rousing success.
Continue Reading
The Trip: Stature Gap
Given the increasingly apparent stature gap -- with Obama's appearance in Amman taking on the look-and-feel of a full-fledged Presidential news conference -- the difference between the first shot above and the slightly scruffy, old-time, "vision-thing" quality of Mac and Poppy, and the recorders, is not the function of...
Continue Reading
The Trip: Begging The Comparison
What is ironic about this image is how much it speaks to Director Petraeus's thorough management and control over our view of the Iraq War.
Continue Reading
The Trip : I Say Energetic, You Say Flat
With the newswires full of emotional images -- the troops, brass, and just about everyone coming into contact with Obama in Afghanistan engaging him so warmly -- why was this pic chosen to represent the story on Monday's NYT front page so autistic?
Continue Reading
McCain Pitching In The Bottom Of The 9/11th
With McCain fighting to maintain relevancy in light of Obama's world tour (and complete ownership of the Afghanistan issue), it was funny to see Mac's move. (I say funny more in terms of resourceful, than pathetic.)
Continue Reading
The Trip : Making The Scene At Bagram
Seeing Obama in front of American troops at Bagram is not only a great relief (and, hopefully, a preview), it offers a profound contrast with what we've been suffering from.
Continue Reading
Obama's Not Human
Newsweek blogger Andrew Romero describes Obama as "Self-Flagellator-in-Chief" for supposedly working out too much.
Continue Reading
Love And Kisses
If I'm a little late to the story, I've been thinking about these shots of Phil Gramm and the McCain's at the Citadel following the South Carolina primary victory in January.
Continue Reading
The "What" Of What's Wrong With The Barack Osama New Yorker Cover
The BNN reaction to Barry Blitt's New Yorker "Politics of Fear" cover
Continue Reading
Latest LA Times Poll: Six-Of-One, Half-A-Dozen-Of-The-Other
Catch this dangerous new meme driven home by this cleverly simple diptych hatched today by the LA Times. The visual take-away is: Obama and McCain, what's the difference?
Continue Reading
Well, Obviously
If you study him, one fundamental you'll discover is that McCain -- like a looping tape -- feels a compulsive need to reflect on how he's screwed up this or screwed up that.
Continue Reading
McTownhall Versus McTeleprompter
If the visual media has mostly bypassed scenes of McCain in tortured teather to his gaffe-prevention, large-type babysitter, examples are not hard to find.
Continue Reading
The Picture Of Experience (Or, McCain Goes Belly Up)
By raising McCain's specific, formal command experience as a campaign issue, Wesley Clark's comments reframe and nominate this photo for infamy, signifying the moment and event that eliminated any opportunity for McCain to advance and prove himself militarily in combat -- like his father and grandfather did -- as...
Continue Reading
Alien-nation
Please excuse the detour from the front page as ... I'm currently knee-deep in putting together my presentation for the NetRoots Nation "Don't Think of Violence" panel and I wanted to share this image I just turned up.
Continue Reading