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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Red Light State District
People have been sending me so many examples of the right wing’s current preoccupation with sex, it gave me the excuse to create my own version of the 2004 electoral map. Instead of compiling links to salacious material being trumpeted by various "family values" coalitions, I’m just directing you...
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A Symbolic Look at the Iraqi Army: Who’s Watching Who?
Lately, I’ve been reading through the literature on the semiotics of news photographs. Among a long list of criteria by which to analyze a news photo, one consideration involves the extent to which subjects actually pose for the camera. This shot in yesterday’s NYTimes is a strange one. The...
Continue ReadingRed Light State District
People have been sending me so many examples of the right wing’s current preoccupation with sex, it gave me the excuse to create my own version of the 2004 electoral map. Instead of compiling links to salacious material being trumpeted by various “family values” coalitions, I’m just directing you...
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Comment Comments
I hadn’t planned on doing much thinking about this blog over Thanksgiving. Because the BAG is a part-time endeavor that keeps demanding more than that, I was looking forward to the rest. In spite of myself, however, I did spent some time thinking about some of the comments here...
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LATimes Fallujah Coverage: A Cup Overwhelmingly Half Full
Following up on my entry yesterday about the L.A. Times Fallujah coverage, I can report to you that the paper’s “Pollyanna” complex continues. In this morning’s edition, LATimes Staff Writer Patrick J. McDonnell gives a repeat performance with another pro-Administration propaganda piece. The subject of this article (“This Time,...
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Your House Is My House
Something has been nagging at me as I look at pictures of the Fallujah operation. I always feel a little uncomfortable about the occupation of Iraqi homes and mosques for U.S. military operations. I remember a shot I saw last week of three marines in the living room of...
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Lend Your Wit To The BAG! “Whoops, I Thought You Said OPEC!”
A reader, Mike, sent me this great image. I was hoping some of you might help supply a caption. I’ll take the one that sounds the most clever and rename the post with it on Wednesday night. (I had a possibility or two in mind, which I will add...
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It’s Plain To See What We’re Supposed To See
I was interested in this photo accompanying Sunday’s NYTimes Week in Review article about Condi Rice. The article (“Hawk Sightings Could Be Premature”) is filled with speculation over what kind of Secretary of State Rice will be and what philosophy she will bring to the job. There are questions...
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Fallujah: The Best Is Yet To Come
Because the major trend lines for Bush’s second term are still developing, it’s hard to know, right now, exactly how and where the major whitewash will be applied. However, just as we knew early on in the first term about the Saddam agenda and the manipulation of intelligence, we...
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Bush’s Crusade (Or: Aren’t the Metaphor’s Getting a Little Obvious?)
I wish this was a joke. According to Yahoo News: US Marines of the 1st Division dressed as gladiators try to control a horse and stage a chariot race reminiscent of the Charlton Heston movie–complete with confiscated Iraqi horses at their base outside Fallujah, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 6 ,...
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And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
If you think you’re going to see more pictures of Bush getting squeezed or marginalized anytime soon, you’re fooling yourself. If “W” took a back seat last week at the ceremonies for the Clinton library, he otherwise spent time moving things out of his way. The past week was...
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In The Quest For The Marlboro Man
Here’s an update regarding the recent attempt by the media to turn a US soldier into an icon. If you recall, I recently detailed an effort, on the part of the LATimes, to hype the photo of James Miller — a soldier taking a smoking break during the attack...
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Media Showing Some Spine — Finally!
If you weren’t aware, another one of those “culture war” controversies began swirling this week over a promotional ad shown on the Monday Night Football telecast. The promo — for the trashy television show, Desperate Housewives — shows a star of the show, Nicolette Sheridan, slipping out a towel...
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Icon Watch — Middle East Edition
Although the point wasn’t exactly lost on me before, the more I think about icons, the more I appreciate how much politics is a cult of personality. My last post had to do with Yasser Arafat and how he came to be depicted as larger than life. In the...
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Passing Thoughts On What Makes An Icon
If an icon is someone who has become larger than life, how do you know if someone has really become one or not? One way, I would volunteer, is when a person becomes signified more by pictures of his picture than by his actual picture. In Yasser Arafat’s death,...
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