Leading Photos: This Guy’s a Real Vacuum Case

The more of these front page photos I study, the more I come to admire the editorial ingenuity of the NYTimes. Even if they run with the day’s leading shot, they hardly ever use the most stage-managed version. Instead, if they have the choice, they tend to go with something that suggests other political interpretations.

Yesterday’s edition has a shot of President Bush looking at centrifuge parts at the Oak Ridge Labs. Here are a few associations I came up with:

a.) Like Paul O’Neill said, Bush is not a “hands-on” kind of guy

b. ) Didn’t Poppa Bush make the same face when they showed him the supermarket scanner?

c.) When it comes to confronting the issue of nukes, this guy comes off awfully small

d.) Still not listening to the folks who know

(image:newseum.org)