The Telltale Heart
At the psychological core of McCain's demeaning and racist video attack on Obama Wednesday, we have McCain actively staining Obama, then fingering Obama for the blotch. What the photographer and the photographs point to, and what McCain seems to unavoidably telegraph, is his outright blemish.
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Celeb #2: Exploding Obama At The Subliminal Level
I think we are being played if -- in deconstructing "Celeb," the McCain Obama-attack video -- we go so far as unearth and analyze the allusions to racist sexual stereotypes but overlook the possible allusions to violence itself.
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Celeb #1: Obama As Sexual Predator
A look at how the McCain campaign's anti-Obama "Celeb" video conveys racist allusions to sexual promiscuity and rape.
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A Crude Salute
In the midst of the U.S. occupation of oil-rich Iraq (initiated under false pretenses), conservatives obviously don't get the irony of having their presidential nominee and wife billboarding militarism while standing next to an oil derrick.
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McCain's Uppity Gym Rat
In my "ObamaPhobia" talk at NetrootsNation, I detailed a pattern of negative media coverage built around racist stereotypes as well as false rumors of Obama as a closet Muslim. My focus, of course, was on how this framing plays out at the visual level. In McCain's latest attack...
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Still Playing In Peoria (Depending On Who's Looking)
Demonstrating that Dubya and the White House remain firmly inside their bubble, compare these two shots of Bush on Friday in Peoria.
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The Trip: When Obama Became Acting President
it takes little-to-nothing to imagine Obama, the C.I.C., parked in the center of the action, Vice President Hagel fighting a little jet lag and Secretary of State Reed telling Petraeus (and the about-to-be furloughed Mr. Crocker) how it's going to be.
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4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images
The military's visual censorship in Iraq was punctured today by a story in the <em>New York Times</em>. In a courageous piece, photographer Michael Kamber penned a concise exposé not only outlining the pervasive, hypocritical and ever more manipulative censorship being practiced by the U.S. military, but also specifically detailing...
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The Trip: Let's Get Small
Reprising Hillary Clinton's "tastes great, less filling" attack narrative, the news analysis headlined "Obama, Vague on Issues, Pleases Crowds in Europe" rolls out a litany of quotes from Europeans critical of Obama, matched by a laundry list of subjects Obama's Tiergarten speech seemingly failed to tackle more clearly, from...
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Fudge Haus
If the strategy of the day was to emphasize McCain's ability, evoking a German setting, to successfully engage 199,990 fewer people than Obama captivated in Berlin, the event, plus the photo, was a rousing success.
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Vanity Fair's Obama Osama Envy
In a thoroughly clueless act of so-called "solidarity" (or perhaps "molotov cocktail envy"), Vanity Fair has created its own, parallel version of the New Yorker Obama Osama cover.
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The Trip: Stature Gap
Given the increasingly apparent stature gap -- with Obama's appearance in Amman taking on the look-and-feel of a full-fledged Presidential news conference -- the difference between the first shot above and the slightly scruffy, old-time, "vision-thing" quality of Mac and Poppy, and the recorders, is not the function of...
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The Trip: Begging The Comparison
What is ironic about this image is how much it speaks to Director Petraeus's thorough management and control over our view of the Iraq War.
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Fear In The Markets
by Robert Hariman Kafka’s Trial and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (for images, go here and here) were once touchstones for understanding the deep anxieties of modern social organization.... Both came to mind recently, and particularly Kafka’s depiction of K, the everyman caught in organizational processes that by turns snare, thwart,...
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The Trip : I Say Energetic, You Say Flat
With the newswires full of emotional images -- the troops, brass, and just about everyone coming into contact with Obama in Afghanistan engaging him so warmly -- why was this pic chosen to represent the story on Monday's NYT front page so autistic?
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McCain Pitching In The Bottom Of The 9/11th
With McCain fighting to maintain relevancy in light of Obama's world tour (and complete ownership of the Afghanistan issue), it was funny to see Mac's move. (I say funny more in terms of resourceful, than pathetic.)
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The "Gilly"
I just want to say how honored and proud I am to have been awarded the first Gilliard Grant of Merit for Excellence in Journalism and News Blogging this morning at Netroots Nation.
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