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Media Focus Photo August 31, 2010

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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Will the Last Regiment to Leave Iraq Please Turn ON the Lights

Looking at this photo from the brilliant AP propaganda slideshow of the U.S. leaving Iraq last week, I could help thinking of this cartoon.

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Alan Chin Photo August 30, 2010

Katrina: Faces Of The Storm

The day of the anniversary itself: Alan Chin, Stanley Greene, Andy Levin, and Mario Tama in New Orleans.

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A 3rd Reason Glenn Luther King Hit it Out of the Park in DC – God (and GW) are in the Tea House

What took the pundits and the opposition off-guard at the Lincoln Memorial was not Beck's play to the center, but his hard turn toward the heavens. His obsession with the deity and the use of the God card -- overriding what, up-to-know, has been the separation of church...

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Campaign '10 Photo August 29, 2010

A 2nd Reason Glenn Luther King Hit it Out of the Park in DC – They Left the Signs at Home

In removing signs from his rally at the Washington Memorial, Beck did more than just conjure up the appearance of sanctity and kumbaya. He also transferred the picture of anger and hysteria onto the

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Alan Chin Photo

Katrina: Five Years Passing

Lee Celano, Alan Chin, and Mario Tama: Eyes on Katrina, Five Years Passing

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Race Focus Photo August 28, 2010

1st Reason Glenn Luther King Hit it Out of the Park in DC — Visual Media Swallowed the King Sham

If Glenn Beck had even tried with the best PR minds to create an image for his event that appropriated King's dream, he couldn't have come up with anything better.

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Race Focus Photo

Katrina + 5 and Racial Violence: Like the Picture Wasn’t There the Whole Time?

What's most notable throughout The Times article, especially in contrast to the photo, is the emphasis on what happened as uncommon knowledge -- uncommon, that is, to the white corporate media and the military establishment that created a narrative of siege, then waged war on the: "poor blacks and...

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BagNewsSalon Visual Week In Review Photo August 26, 2010

Visual Week in Review: Mosque-Phobic Out-of-Towners; Obama Islam Poll; Meaner McCain

This week's VWIR focuses on the hysteria surrounding the proposed Park 51 Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero as a prelude to the upcoming 9/11 anniversary and a wedge issue in the mid-term elections.

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Park 51 Islamic Center: Prisoner of War?

I thought this was a striking visual commentary offered by an AFP/Getty pool photographer about the culture war gripping Lower Manhattan, and the rest of the country.

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Mehlman's Coming Out Dance: Now Free to Enlist Gays Against Islamic Jihad

Ken Mehlman ("the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay") still has a way to go in reconciling his sexual and his political orientation.

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Disaster Focus Photo August 25, 2010

Beyond "Compassion Fatigue": A Tale of Two Cities

Those who decry “compassion fatigue” have plenty to support their claims, but if we look closely we might see differences that warrant less knee jerk reactions. As a case in point, consider the difference between the floods in Pakistan and the mudslide in Zhouqu County, China.

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Race Focus Photo

Shirley Sherrod: There, There, Tom

There's life. And then, there's the photo-op.

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Campaign '10 Photo

Mid-Term Update: GOP Identity Crisis

If Rubio is the brightest young star in the GOP constellation, the way he's been framed over the past two years shows how much the Republicans lack an identity.

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Campaign '10 Photo August 24, 2010

McCain Ends Campaign With a Hug? Are You Serious?

What the Times pic calls out is the phoniness and impersonality of the photo op -- reflecting the cynical and hateful campaign McCain ran.

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Faith Focus Photo

A Look Inside Cordoba Prayer Space. Hmm.

So, what's with all the fire extinguishers?

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Photo August 23, 2010

Why Isn't White House "Feeling More Cross" Over "Islamobama"?

When are the Democrats going to understand that right-wing framing, as simple-minded and redundant as it is, happens to work? In other words, if 11 % of the population thought you were Muslim last week, then 12% the next day, then 18% the day-before-yesterday….

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Ground Zero Tea Party

The presence of this Tea Party flag at a Lower Manhattan anti-Muslim protest demonstrates how confused and easily manipulated the so-called movement really is.

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