Coated Layer Of Grace
Even among voices that have been extremely even-handed over the past week or so, there has been a lot of disappointment around the 'sphere regarding the anti-Obama remarks issued yesterday by BET President and Clinton surrogate, Robert Johnson. What I haven't heard discussed, however, were the visual trappings surrounding...
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Opening The Black-Pink Divide
What the practitioners of wedge politics -- in collusion with a media hungry for conflict, fear and negativity -- are currently fixing in place, is a black-pink divide.
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Shading Obama
why is it so threatening to the corporate media that Obama identifies himself, not as a black politician, but a politician who happens to be black?
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Blinding At The Border
For reinforcing the simplistic conclusion that the border fence successfully lowers the number of illegal immigrants who make it into this country on foot across our southern border, the LA Times headline, in combination with this image, is dangerously irresponsible.
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Your Turn: The Tension Of Clichy-sous-Bois
Yesterday, the NYT featured this image with an article on the upcoming one year anniversary of suburban rioting in France. The picture, in fact, led the on-line edition. These faces viscerally convey how much these young men perceive themselves (and sense themselves, through the gaze of society) as animals,...
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Going For A Ride?
Did you notice this shot on the front of Thursday's NYT? The accompanying article (Overcoming Adoption’s Racial Barriers) examined the increasing tendency for white families to adopt black children. Where I had a hang up, however, was with this image. I found it misleading, and exploitive of those sensitivities the...
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Sambo Joe And The Visual Blogosphere
If you missed the brouhaha, Jane Hamsher of firedoglake briefly became a subject of controversy in the Connecticut senatorial primary yesterday morning. Having spent the last two weeks traveling with the Lamont campaign while blasting at Lieberman on her blog, Hamsher led off her most recent campaign update at...
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Heartbreak Hotel
If you were to ask, they were "just" showing Prime Minister Koizumi where Dr. King was shot -- since they had done it up at Graceland and were in the neighborhood anyway. In their constant (and symbolically heavy-handed) quest to ingratiate themselves with the black voting populace, however, it's...
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High Tech And Off The Wall
That means devices like the Tethered Aerostat Radar, a helium-filled airship made for the Air Force by Lockheed Martin that is twice the size of the Goodyear Blimp.... And even if most of the $425 million spend over the past ten years was wasted on border technology that wasn't...
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Bush's Rainbow
A number of you wrote about this lead photo in yesterday's NYT. The image shows George Bush in a marine lunch line in Twenty-Nine Palms, California. Because Bush is chumming it up with the white soldier, while the (lone) black soldier next to Bush seems miles away (and less interested...
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Toning Down The Radicalism
If you were looking for a front line player in the racist campaign against Mexican immigrants, Michelle Malkin would be a likely candidate. And what is her primary line-of-attack lately? It's that pro-immigration demonstrators have hijacked the American flag. In a post two days ago, Ms. Malkin accused "illegal alien...
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"You Bug So Much You Woke Up The Sleeping Giant"
Back in 2001, in working with the first Villaraigosa mayoral campaign to create a series of identifying web and print graphics, we imagined a different character for L.A.'s City Hall.The vision involved an emphasis on listening, openness and the capacity to build bridges between radically disparate communities.  Plenty of...
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GWB/MLK Day
(click image for full White House size) I love the audacity I love the ABC headline: Bush Says King's 'Dream' Not Yet Completed I love the presence of that third icon, the Stars and Stripes I love the emotion in Bush's eyes I love the look toward (Martin in?) ...
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Tookie's Celebrity
Admittedly, I didn't follow the Tookie Williams story very closely. However, I got an email today from Mark Spittle, who is customarily a satirist and who's new blog has been advertised on The BAG.
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De-Fence Of Liberty
On the other side are liberals who see a subtle and no so subtle racism in the border debate and feel that all this talk of cultural dissonence is a false construct.... I think my theory is borne out by the right's increasing emphasis on the Mexican border...
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Height of Omission
Sometimes I get some chiding for focusing so much on the hard copy newspaper when a.) I’m electronic, and b.) it’s a dying form. It’s not because I’m nostalgic. It’s mostly because the organization of the print paper with its variable relations and proportions lends an insight into the...
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Veterans of Foreigner's War
Is it just me, or was it dicey for Saturday’s LAT to run a front page shot of soldiers being sworn in as citizens? Combine a controversial and thankless war, questions about coercive military recruiting practices, problems regarding skewed demographics in the armed services, as well simmering tensions surrounding...
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Katrina Aftermath: And Then I Saw These
Until last night, I thought the news images we had seen from New Orleans during the worst days of Katrina were fundamentally unvarnished. And then I saw these. Among his peers, Alan Chin is regarded as one of the finest photojournalists in the field -- and I say that...
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