I took my car in to get an oil change this morning and this commercial was playing in the waiting area. My two favorite parts are when the white family toasts their Obama plate in the beginning and when the man in the pink shirt stops writing, turns to gaze upon his Obama plate, and then turns back to his writing with a shit-eating grin.
In an age of hyper-partisan media and made-for-TV presidential stagecraft does the photograph still play an important role in helping the electorate define a candidate? Or, has the singular photographic image morphed from moment definer to mere visual buttress to support the rhetoric of partisans?
Tonight, I am looking for answers.
“Framing the Presidency” Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 7:00 p.m. The New School Tishman Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J. M. Kaplan Hall 66 West 12th Street, New York City
The Aperture Foundation, the Photography Department of Parsons The New School for Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School present a new season of panel discussions focusing on photography. The second event is “Framing the Presidency,” which explores the collision of photography, mass media, and politics in the 2008 presidential campaign and beyond. Artists and media experts share their experiences and explore the power of photography in constructing our image of the presidency.
With Tim Davis, photographer Robert Hariman, Chair of Communication Studies at Northwestern University Todd Heisler, Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist David Scull, New York Times campaign picture editor photographer
As Hillary Clinton can attest, a good portrait is not a random selection of what the camera sees, with no subjective input from human observers. A good portrait offers not mechanical objectivity but what the historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison in their 2007 book Objectivity call “truth to nature,” the standard Enlightenment naturalists used in their scientific atlases. “They conceived of fidelity,” write Daston and Galison, “in terms of the exercise of informed judgment in the selection of ‘typical,’ ‘characteristic,’ ‘ideal,’ or ‘average’ images: all these were varieties of the reasoned image.”
I have no doubt that when historians weigh in on the last eight years they will cast it as one of the darkest periods in our nation's history. What we do know about the Bush administration is troubling enough, but what we don't know is the stuff of nightmares.
Beyond the obvious need to change our domestic policy agenda and repair our tattered reputation in the world, an Obama presidency and a Democratic Congress are necessary if we want to expose and dismantle the "dark side" of the Bush/Cheney years. Some Democrats say we have to turn the page and not look back, but that's bullshit. These punks hijacked our country, ripped up the Constitution, and did unspeakable things in our name. We need a full-on exorcism of the last eight years. We need a full accounting of their crimes. We need to bring it all to the light of day. And they need to serve time.
I urge you to watch Torturing Democracy when it plays on your local PBS station. If it has already played or if your PBS station is refusing to run it (some are), you can watch the whole documentary here.
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day.
Personally, I would have cut off his testicles and fed them to jackals.
The photo above ran with a story today in the NY Times about Bill Clinton assuming a higher profile role in Hillary's campaign. I love this photo and I hate this photo. It manages to pack more narrative into a single image than all the other photos in the NY Times combined. But, it triggers so many negative visual codes that it make me uncomfortable. Do you find this image as provocative as I do? What does is say to you?
I once viewed this administration as merely incompetent. Now, in their every scandal, I see the calculating and pathological actions of a criminal. From the Washington Post:
FEMA Knew Of Toxic Gas In Trailers The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said yesterday.
A trail of e-mails obtained by investigators shows that the agency's lawyers rejected a proposal for systematic testing of the levels of potentially cancer-causing formaldehyde gas in the trailers, out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems. As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.
On June 16, 2006, three months after reports of the hazards surfaced and a month after a trailer resident sued the agency, a FEMA logistics expert wrote that the agency's Office of General Counsel "has advised that we do not do testing, which would imply FEMA's ownership of this issue." A FEMA lawyer, Patrick Preston, wrote on June 15: "Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK. . . . Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them."
FEMA tested no occupied trailers after March 2006, when it initially discovered formaldehyde levels at 75 times the U.S.-recommended workplace safety threshold and relocated a south Mississippi couple expecting their second child, the documents indicate. Formaldehyde, a common wood preservative used in construction materials such as particle board, can cause vision and respiratory problems; long-term exposure has been linked to cancer and higher rates of asthma, bronchitis and allergies in children.
One man in Slidell, La., was found dead in his trailer on June 27, 2006, after complaining about the formaldehyde fumes. In a conference call about the death, 28 officials from six agencies recommended that the circumstances be investigated and trailer air quality be subjected to independent testing. But FEMA lawyers rejected the suggestions, with one, Adrian Sevier, cautioning that further investigation not approved by lawyers "could seriously undermine the Agency's position" in litigation.
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