No Other Way To Couch It
At this stage of the nomination dance, why does the typical Harriet Miers photo still show her waiting alone outside some Senator’s door (and positioned so far away, no less)? The answer — which some right wingers are desperately trying to justify as qualification — is that she earned...
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Portrait of Evil Vs. Evil Portrait
I’m no apologist for Saddam Hussein. At the same time, I cannot fail to give credit for the brilliant timing involved in flooding the news space with the sudden drum-beat of anti-Saddam hysteria. My respects to the BushCo. managers as well as Iraqi insiders for so quickly changing the...
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Repeat After Me And Then Raise Your Right Hand
Let’s just talk about lines of sight. From all internal calculations, the new Bush PR team (led — from what I hear — by Andy Card) assumed that the cameras would just line up squarely behind Bush and set up that wonderful shot below. What they didn’t calculate, however,...
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From the Archive (Oct '05): Exit The Green Zone
Okay, so this post was 4 1/2 years too early, the Americans only exiting the Green Zone today. ********* Let’s go back to mid-August. The U.S. had imposed a deadline of August 15th for Iraqi legislators/power brokers to come up with a constitution. At the same time, Condi Rice...
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Practically Obvious
After London authorities discovered that that the July 7th bombers had cased the underground two weeks prior to their actual attack, you would think this was the only picture made available to the media. Not true. Video and stills revealed three of the four perpetrators in various places and...
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Please Pass The Danish
(click for larger version) What I find so interesting is the persistent (visual) characterization of Harriet Miers as a secretary. Of course, so many of the images made available by the White House emphasize Miers in a subservient or functionary role, usually with a "gal Friday" feel to them....
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Flat Head Tastes Flat Bread
The visuals are just too good to believe — as expose, I mean. Karen Hughes, self-described "Mom," supposed PR expert, Bush hand-holder and now US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is just wrapping up her first trip abroad, having visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. ...
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Rita Madness
If not a “finest hour,” the media coverage in the immediate aftermath of Katrina was at least one of the “better hours.” With a new storm brewing off Florida and aiming for Eastern Texas, however, it appears the press is acting like underestimation is unaffordable. As if preparing for...
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Playing the Cathedral
In the first flood of photos documenting the effects of Hurricane Katrina, I hadn’t noticed how many struck a religious theme. Looking more closely, however, there were any number of floating icons, windswept priests, home made signs appealing for mercy, and churches with roofs blown off and spires folded...
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Bush's N.O. Restart — A Visual Report Card
(Bloggers Note: Before anybody gets crazy on me, I’m just having a little fun here. It’s Friday. …And, consider the material I have to work with!) I’ve been throwing so much analysis at you this week, I thought it was time for the visuals to do more of the...
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The Week America Lost New Orleans: A Presidential Retrospective (#3)
Katrina Disaster — Day 3 Wednesday, August 31, 2005 As the Gulf Coast disaster spins out of control, most of us see this picture (taken by Mannie Garcia of Reuters) and conclude that the President is out of touch. However, in light of the incompetence that follows; the time...
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9/11 All Over Again
Dubya is back! (And the graphics couldn’t be more loaded.) With Bush’s third visit to the Gulf Coast, Rove has retooled the visual vocabulary. In a reprise of “the glory days,” Bush posed yesterday with New York firefighters in New Orleans. The gratuitous caption states that the firemen “also...
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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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Icon Help
Yesterday, Condi was on the ground in Alabama kicking off the Bush/Rove PR blitz to counterspin the Katrina meltdown (and pin it on local Democrats). Lending an assist, the caption of the AFP photo above (taken in July, but featured on YahooNews yesterday), stated that Condi "dismissed claims...
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Giving Darwin The Finger
This is one of those images that makes me glad the BAG has developed such a keen group of readers and co-analysts. I’ll give you some of my takes, and then I’ll leave it to you to peel more layers. Here’s what I’ve got: 1. We know the right...
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Stemless Faith
I can never tell in these instances if the press is too intimidated by the right wing to challenge their story line, or they just aren’t thinking hard enough. Yesterday, the NYT provided a completely free launch to the Frist for President campaign. (And who said there’s no such...
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Civility — Or Else!
I was listening to George Lakoff on the radio this morning talking about the right wing exploitation of language. Frankly, I was shocked how circumlocutious he was. I thought, if Lakoff himself can’t put his arguments in a crisp package, we are in trouble. Which brings me to my...
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