New Head of the Passport Office
In the latest State of the Union speech, George Bush announced a new initiative aimed at helping young African-American males avoid gangs and prison. The program, “Helping America’s Youth,” is a three-year, $150-million initiative under the direction of non-other than Laura Bush. At best, this program is a trifling...
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Your Turn: Reviewing the Tape
Your feedback on the Dean image was so good, I thought I’d offer you another one. A BAG reader, Jerry, directed me to this shot from the NYT. The photo immediately precedes Mike Chertoff’s swearing-in ceremony. The caption reads: The new secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, with Supreme...
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Touchdown for the Indecency Police?
Maybe I was too effected by Frank Rich’s column this week, discussing the current wave of Christian conservative media censorship. Whatever it was, after watching a few minutes of the Paul McCartney Superbowl halftime performance, I couldn’t help thinking the stage looked like a giant cross. Looking at the...
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Iraq Election Final: What's Up A Sleeve
(for a larger version, click here) While hunting around this afternoon, it was nice to accidentally come upon a piece of photo analysis by someone else who is covering some of the same territory. In an in depth analysis, Omar Khan took a look at this image which appeared...
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Poster Boy for the West?
Since a number of interesting questions came up from yesterday’s electioneering post, I was wondering what other information the newswire photos might suggest about the Iraqi vote. One question is whether Iyad Allawi might be getting some campaign help from the west. I ask because the news photos show...
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Let's See That Glue Stick, Soldier!
So, the neocons have regained their ascendency and George Bush is pledging to bring freedom and democracy to practically every corner of the world. If that’s so, we had better hope that the next couple campaigns are more successful that the one we’re now attempting to wash our hands...
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Your Turn: Seeing and Buying
Since I’ve been looking into Arnold recently, I thought some of you might want to get in on the action. This shot ran on Yahoo News the same day they ran photos of his helicopter ride to survey storm damage near Los Angeles. This picture was taken in Tokyo...
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Gunner's Palace Update
Back in June, I did a post about Michael Tucker, an embedded journalist in Iraq who was making a film about the war. An unpretentious observer with a clear eye for emotional details, Tucker bonded easily with soldiers and assembled a website offering bits and pieces about the impact...
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Your Turn: Bush at the Garden
If you’ve been following the blog, or you get what I’m doing, or you’re one of those visual studies student who’s been getting a little tired of the professor’s brilliance, I invite you to lend your analysis to this image. It was published in a special NYTimes “Year in...
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Georgeleeza Rice — Part 2
One or two cartoons back, I did a composite drawing of Bush and Rice. My point was that the new cabinet nominees were notable for their lack of identity or differentiation from Bush. If it seems that the administration consists of just a few players who basically meld together...
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Who Drained the Pension Pool (Or: Further Thoughts on Why the Democrats Lost the Election)
This image accompanied a piece in this weekend’s NYTimes Week In Review titled “A Premature Sunset for Pension Plans?” I don’t think an article has irked me this much in a long time. In clear and simple terms, it explains how the notion that pension funds are unaffordable or...
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Hold That Towel: Making (Non)Sense of Monday Night Football’s Sex Farce
Following the ABC/NFL/FCC “moral values” spectacle, leave it to World Wrestling (link) to come away with the best spoof. (Note: I’ve tried playing this clip on two different browsers in the large size, but it had some hiccups. The smaller size, however — although harder to see — came...
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Cleaning Out The Cabinet
I was drawn to this shot on Yahoo News today illustrating Steven Hadley’s elevation to National Security Chief. Out of all the images they could have pulled from the file drawer, why chose this one (from April 2001)? My take is that it illustrates how much the new team...
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The Known Soldier
Larry Holdaway is an artist and photographer who created this haunting, nearly recognizable face by combining the available portraits of every American soldier killed in Iraq from March 2003 to September 2004. As Larry writes: “This is the face of America’s sacrifice, the face of more than a thousand...
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Rage Against the Machine
“Votergate” is a video that tells the story of Bev Harris, and how she exposed Diebold’s highly fallible voting technology. It also recounts other abuses, including the story of Republican Susan Bernecker, a local council candidate in Lousiana whose 1996 election was thrown by electronic voting system fraud. (Above,...
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More F*** New York
Right after the Republican Convention, I profiled a video clip from a group called F*** New York. Although their first offering was more sophisticated, this is a commendable job for good, straight ahead sarcasm. View here. (source: hiphopmusic.com)
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A Show of Hands
You’ve got to be pretty dim to have your hands all over a colleague in direct view of the fixed angle C-SPAN camera in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to dKos, two freshman Republican members proved to be that unconscious. Not surprisingly, the woman on the right is...
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Just Drop The Big One
One of my younger, but quite politically astute visitors — who shares my feeling that JibJab is overrated — sent me this. He was insistent I run it. It’s cheesy, but Randy Newman seems particularly appropriate right now. I especially liked the bit in front of the United Nations....
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