Obama, the Rolling Stone Cover, and Playing from Behind
With the Tea Party's standard bearers looking more and more radical and wild-eyed, this photo of the President, calm and grounded outside the Oval Office, is all the more impactful for the lack of drama or pizzaz.
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The $100 Million Photo Op
Waiting for "Superman."The Reaction? How about: Waiting for "The Social Network," with this show and photo as the reaction? Or, the pre-emption.
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Winner … and Still Champion!
Considering the date of this winning "Magazine Cover of the Year" award, it seems the message has only grown stronger.
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DADT: Media Gaga Over Everything … Except What She Had to Say
Most of the reports on her rally are primarily, if not exclusively photographic, almost to the exclusion of what she actually had to say. The irony, of course, is that a quasi-faux rally cast as political spectacle received far more coverage than the presumably unintentional spectacle of actual Senators...
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Beyond Sex With an Elephant, Meghan, What are you Trying to Tell Me?
And I was already wondering what was going on under the Republican big tent.
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Post Racial? Yeah, Sure.
This post was going to be about how despite being a fairly educated working stiff all my life, I have still only achieved one of six benchmarks that guarantee middle class status- a small modicum of health insurance (although in all honesty, I have afforded vacations- in the past)....
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Secret Mosque in the White House. No Joke!
Given the set-up in this Luckovich cartoon the NYT ran in the Week in Review, the threshold to hit the funny bone is to attribute the interpretation of a prayer rug, or Obama praying, to the prejudiced eye of the Tea Party crazies out the window. The...
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Newsweek's Making of a Muslim* President
These aren't just words or phases. They are incendiary slogans that, whether spoken or billboarded to the nation as word pictures, convey that much more weight, recognition and resonance to terms, finely-crafted for cultural wedge-driving and linguistic repetition, that otherwise aren't justified either coming off the lips of a...
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9/11! 9/11! — Milking Fear, Hate, Islamic Scapegoating, Newsweek Piles On
A news magazine in limbo wouldn't actually stoop to validate a racist and paranoid misrepresentation, would it?
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Daily News' "Sad Loner" Obama
As a classic example of "caption abuse," check out this example from yesterday's New York Daily News. Not only do they take the White House's own photo and use it against the Obama, but the caption, especially when combined with the headline and the lede absolutely misleads on at...
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Blowback from the War Logs: The (Visual) Vendetta against Julian Assange
At this point, it's truly a case of "shoot the messenger."
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Beyond the Cover: Further Thoughts on TIME’s "Women of Afghanistan"
I'm wondering how much the wildness and sensuality in a photo like this serves to foster empathy for a child in today's Afghanistan versus how much as it lifts Zohal from the world she occupies and splices her into a stylish, Westernized fantasy scene that hip Western media consumers...
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What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan?? …Try, What’s Happening on this Cover?
Any surprise this "tug at your heart" cover comes out just days after Wikileak brings the failure of the Afghan campaign into the light -- and just as the campaign against Wikileak and Julian Assange gets going in the MSM? And, isn’t the cover title applying emotional blackmail and...
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The View … of the Old Obama
What the photo captures is something we haven't seen much of for about a year-and-a-half, which is a more youthful and free-wheeling Barack.
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Chelsea Update: Hat Lash
Notice to Chelsea: Watch your back (or, your head) for holding out on an over-entitled media.
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The Economist v Obama
If the explanation the Economist Deputy Editor offered the NYT is disingenuous, it does serve to telegraph their motive. Emma Duncan said the magazine wasn't trying to make a political point, but that's exactly what they were doing.
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CSI Connecticut
If I immerse myself in the whodunnit, I don't have to worry as much about if they had done it.
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