Laura: Just Say N.O.
So, Laura didn’t know the name of the hurricane? So Laura thinks the idea that race played a role in George’s foot dragging is “disgusting?” (…Somehow, Florida voters seem to get pretty good Federal response when the winds start to blow.) I’ve been tracking the Bush’s patronization of blacks...
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Banned On The Bayou
Before anyone gets slap-happy over the candor exhibited by the media at the height of the Katrina disaster, consider that it happened in a near total political vacuum. Certainly, with the Bush PR machine reasserting itself in a directed (read: take-no-prisoners) effort to regain control of the disaster narrative,...
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More Shame
Not only did Kos have a devastating post on Tuesday regarding FEMA’s employment of firefighters as PR props during Bush’s Katrina visit, he also presented the visual smoking gun. Although the photo is damning enough, I was further interested in the emotional cost of Bush’s interference on the responders...
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Blinded By The Light?
Wednesday, August 31st Thursday, September 1st Thursday, September 1st Friday, September 2nd Friday, September 2nd Saturday, September 3rd Certainly, most of the Katrina images last week were unvarnished and pulled no punches. At the same time, however, I’m wondering how much of what we...
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Your Turn: There's Water and There's The Barrel
Several of you wrote me about this lead image on the NYT website Saturday. The on-line caption read: Troops from the National Guard handed out food and supplies this morning at the convention center in New Orleans. The newspaper image accompanied a story about the long-term emotional effects of...
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The Week America Lost New Orleans: A Presidential Retrospective (#2)
Katrina Disaster — Day 2 Tuesday, August 30, 2005 Still Tuesday. George is backstage at the Naval Air Station in San Diego holding a "Presidential guitar" given to him by country music singer, Mark Wills. By the time I see this shot in the afternoon, I am profoundly aware...
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The Week America Lost New Orleans: A Presidential Retrospective (#1)
The Katrina Disaster — Day 2 Tuesday, August 30, 2005 Dubya is in San Diego likening his private war to WWII. The occasion is VJ Day — the 60th anniversary of the victory over Japan. Bush still has a few days left in his five week summer vacation. Even...
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The Reach Of Compassion
Perhaps photojournalists in New Orleans sense the fundamental racial challenge this disaster presents to the nation right now. In going through the photo sites and galleries last night, some of the most striking images I found were those in which New Orlean’s whites (whether rescue workers or citizens) had...
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War Footing
This is the lead image and headline at DR this morning. Is this what we can expect from the right wing at the height of humanitarian crisis? Of course, the wide angle and the viewers low vantage only makes this more imposing — and that’s without the drawn guns....
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Outside the Crawfish Shak
For a "one man" site with the self-avowed mission of parsing the political visuals, today represented a complete overload. Besides the reverberations of Katrina, there was Bush spending Tuesday completely off-topic (comparing Iraq to WWII; framing himself in front of naval vessels that might otherwise have been hastened to...
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On The Sidelines of the Sidelines
In the face of the horrendous tragedy in New Orleans, the news images carry with them a countless number of fateful themes. Beginning with the weekend evacuation, one unstated subtext running through much of the reporting involved the disparate prospects between rich and poor. In many accounts, for example,...
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Ground Zero
Any thoughts on why the MSM practically ignored the 60th anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki this past week? Is it because the worldwide nuke situation is so unstable that nobody wants to look too closely? Or, could it be that the media would rather let...
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Cheese and Pancakes
Just what do these incendiary photos have to do with strawberries and whipped cream? I wanted to share some of the images released late Wednesday (apparently to the dismay of London police) of the unexploded bombs recovered from the July 7th suicide bombers. These images are groundbreaking because their...
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Right Wing Debris
Except for mere sensationalism, why would Drudge run this image and headline at the same time the White House was bending over backward to show Laura and Jeb basking in a successful shuttle launch, and Dubya literally drooling over it back at the White House? I’ve got a few...
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New You
When a city is being terrorized and suspected bombers are at large, the last thing anybody needs is a semiotic analysis of a sweatshirt. I’m sure to a Londoner, just the thought could be perceived as insensitive. Still, if you believe as strongly as I do in the power...
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The Worst Day
At first, I couldn’t decide who had the worst day yesterday. Was it London’s “first responders” having to contend with the less lethal, but still terrifying and possibly more troubling replay of London’s 7/7 bombings? Was it anyone in London who is a member of the Islamic faith? Was...
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More On London : Terror = Family
Is it getting to the point where terror is the one thing that brings people together? The day after the London attacks, a whole menu of images were available to newspapers and other media capturing Londoners bravely returning to the bus. Initially, I felt both images — by playing...
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The Picture From London: Beyond The Mask
Fear mongers couldn’t have ordered up a better picture. Considering the extent to which our culture is consumed with terrorism these days, it’s remarkable how little examination there is of terror as a psychological phenomenon. You would think, if we were a little more sophisticated as a culture,...
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