Unbounded
So, Reuters and Moqtada al-Sadr got together for a chat and a few photos in Damascus last Friday. Do you think they asked the cleric if they could get in his face for this strange shot? The caption circulating with the image is also curious. It reads: Sadr, a charismatic...
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Cheney Watch: Just A Little Mad
Every so often, a priceless image turns up that runs rampant across the web. This shot, taken at the NRA's 2004 national banquet, has gone completely viral. People are already laughing and mocking Dick Cheney for the fact he shot a friend this weekend while hunting. I can't help wondering,...
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Above The Hold
The most powerful news images are the ones which resonate equally on a political, psychological, emotional and visual level. This photo, by Todd Heisler of The Rocky Mountain News, was one of the winners in the just concluded World Press photo contest. I have seen this shot a number of...
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Your Turn: Flare For The Dramatic
A reader recently referred me to this aerial photograph. It's part of a series of three shots, as well as an accompanying video. He writes: I've been trying to figure out why, or what is it about these photos that make them so remarkable. It can't because they were taken...
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An Almost Religious Love Of Political Sport
Maybe it has something to do with all the recent talk of cartoons. It could also stem from my desire to shift gears a bit after posting more provocative imagery. Or, it could just be the fact the Winter Olympics opened last night and I (unfortunately) noticed Laura Bush...
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Oops, Just Missed
You don't think Rove feels like he's a living genius after Bush drops a hysteria bomb out of nowhere about some fuzzy, years-old, supposedly foiled jet liner attack on L.A.'s library tower ... and the newswire hands him this?
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Coretta Scott King Memorial In Pictures
I'm sure I'm not digging very deep today, but there were a few political things that caught my eye from yesterday's spectacular lyrical and also hard-hitting commemoration for the passing of Coretta Scott King. The only reason people don't recognize Bush as highly anxious is because he's so thoroughly rehearsed...
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I'll Trade You 12 Danish Mohammeds For An Austrian Bush
What if a European country, through the actions of its own media, realized it could be accused of having solicited and published blasphemous images ridiculing a symbolic figure of world-wide importance? Would it dig in its heels and defend those images in the name of press freedom? Or,...
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Because (I Say) It Says So
During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, I found it fitting that bull-nosed Alberto Gonzales would present a marked-up book dealing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. One way of thinking about the Administration and Congress is in terms of an abusive relationship. The White House is the...
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Your Turn: The Danes Have Mohammed, And The Liberals Have … Kanye?
Although still exceptionally high minded, The BAG's "daily seminar" has had a bit of a knock-down drag-out quality to it over the past few days. In the conversation and debate over the Danish cartoons, a number of our friends with the red ties have tried to draw analogies between (allegedly)...
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Cartoon Backlash
Watching the still escalating fervor over the Danish cartoons, I'm convinced this eruption is symptomatic of a growing acceptance and even encouragement of extremism. On the Western side of the equation, I'm becoming more and more concerned about the extent to which escalating tensions derive from the terrorism paranoia...
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Your Turn: Drawing From Fable
(illustration unattributed. The Economist. February 4, 2006. Cover.)
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The Cartoon That Could End The World
Saudi Arabia and Syria recall their ambassadors from Denmark and Libya closes its embassy in Copenhagen. Muslims storm the Danish embassy in Jakarta, and gunmen threatened the European Union offices in Gaza. Why? Because of 12 cartoons that ran in a Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, in September. From The BAG's standpoint,...
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Anchors Away
Maybe it's just me. But I was wondering about the moral and ethical implications of ABC producing a computer-generated feature on it's anchor nearly getting killed with a bomb.
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State Of The Union In Pictures
Original, it wasn't. (Which seems to speak for Bush's speech, in general.) Because he reprised the same stunt from last year's SOTU (State of the Union Show - link), however, I was intent on studying Bush a little closer this time. First, the President introduces the family of a...
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