Your Turn: Biblical Proportions

I like the coincidental lightning and hair sticking up.

Initial impressions:
Joe’s got two bodies some unseen person is lurking behind his head.
The lightening is coming through him and ends striking the white lady in the back (whose hair is also flying up).
The black woman looks skeptical and a little stand-offish, Joe looks tired and a worried.

Wow. How zealous and grand and imbued with hair-blurring purpose the white-jacketed, long haired, white woman looks in the B.G….her sheaf of papers might even be some unknown version of the Bible! And St. Joe’s hair, ablaze with golden cracklage of martyr-like illumination! While his wizened hair flies about in the divine wind, both women are blown backward by his weary, war-heavy visage—and Dear Joe, the pains of his suffering etched in his troubled brow, lets his hair rise (O HALLELUJAH) to meet the solitary sunbeam angling against the wall, and above his bowing head. And whatever could the short brown woman in the corner want from our exalted and pained Joe? Has she come to request an enlightening explanation of why he doesn’t need to rep for his constituents anymore? Or just to tithe?
O TO TITHE FOR YE, JOE! O TO KNOW YOUR PAINS AND LONELY STRUGGLE!

Wow.
This photo is so mocking of Joe Lieberman, it is almost as if it was designed by republicans in a bizarro-universe where democrats were conservative christians instead of the other way around…
hmm. i gave myself a siezure just typing that. Overall i am incredibly disturbed. What a listlessly insane photo opportunity for some dazed reporter.

Lieberman looks as though he’s just realised that he’s in trouble and is about to cry or wet himself, and it appears to be a reaction to the stern look he is receiving from that black woman.
He is terrified of her. She in turn, is disgusted by him, as though he is an extremely smelly fart.
The lightning, and his hair-on-end, makes him look smited by the other lady and her Christian righteousness, her hair blown back by the (Jewish?) demons she’s exorcising from him (she’s totally just exorcising him).
He looks especially weak and fragile–needing two power ties and an extra-large body to stand up to the women in the picture. Thanks, background guy, for that neat effect.
Nobody likes Joe Lieberman.

Hey yeah, what is up with his hair anyways? That is not natural bad weather hair. He is like a frightened possum?

Joe Lieberman is two people. One of them is, as we know, a hardcore rightwinger. The other one we can’t see.

At least the lightning hit his head. He doesn’t keep anything valuable there.
But I kid. This really is an odd photo — Joe at first looks like he’s a wild-haired preacher of the fire and brimstone God, able to summon lightning by his prose. Yet if you look at his face he has the expression of a tired old man slouching around hoping for the best.
The lady he’s talking to seems to be looking straight at his lips as though she needs the visual aid to understand what he’s saying.

Occasionally I look at a photo posted here, and I just don’t see anything very interesting. But this one is fascinating – you can just keep looking at it and seeing different things… It looks like a poster for a “Rocky Horror Show” kind of film.
What’s that thing that seems to be growing out of Lieberman’s chin? It looks like the fake beards used by the Pharoahs. (Maybe it’s really the tie of some guy standing behind him?)

In New England he is often refered to as ‘Holy Joe’.
With his many other appalling facades it’s nice to know, at least, he doesn’t use hair spray.

This picture is quite interesting indeed. Joe’s eyes don’t seem to connect with the black woman in front of him, quite like he doesn’t seem to connect with the voters in CT. He’s out of his place, just like Bush was out of his place at the NAACP meeting last week.
It clearly isn’t a photo-op, but both main actors do appear to be placed there by some barely visible third person (DNC?). Joe just clearly isn’t ready for/capable of this kind of connection with an anonymous voter. His tired/disconnected look shows that he’d rather be somewhere else, and his hair shows that he’s unprepared for this kind of situation.
He looks old, weak and irrelevant, and the black woman knows it. Notice her slight frown and downwardly arched lips.
The background is a story in itself. The dark background looks ominous, with the bible and lightning invoking associations of reckoning. Notice however how near the top of the wall a streak of bright light is visible, making the dark setting a little less ominous.
The staffer (?) at the back is the only one not associated with the three people in front, and she doesn’t appear to really notice the background either. For her it’s business as usual, and she’s the only one walking with her head held high. Her hair blown back also emphasizes another contrast beside the racial contrast: the age difference between Lamont and Lieberman.
I’m stumped as to how to interpret the background any further. Lieberman is backed by blue (DNC again), and opposed by black. But the bible? I’m also having trouble with the lightning.

Is Lieberman starting to remind anyone but me of King Lear in the wilderness?

The black woman is indeed stern and unfazed, almost as though a clearly pained and confused Joe (Job?) is getting judgeemt passed upon him from above and below. Perhaps for using his long-ago involvment in the Civil Rights movement aa campaign window dressing while he runs with the Bush league?
Every single interview with Joe has the same basic quote from him: My Connecticut, my Connecticut, why have you forsaken me?

I think the picture shows the confusion most of the media reports I have seen and heard about this race reflect. They note the various elements they think are at play in the race, without appearing to understand what’s going on. For example, I heard on NPR yesterday that Lieberman’s Iraq position is putting him at odds with the “left wing of the Democratic party,” a pretty mystifying characterization since, as a life-long moderate (or now, apparently radical) Republican, along with 60% of my fellow Americans of all stripes I am furious about the disaster Bush and his chief Democratic enabler have created and continue to defend in the middle east. Instead I’m being told that things could hardly be better in Iraq. So I think this is an image that attempts to identify what kinds of bizarre things could be causing Joe to be in such a predicament. It’s loaded with religious imagery (actually pretty much Christian, which is odd since Joe is a Jew) – the Bible, the cross, lightning; it includes irritated women (including a black woman in pearls – that doesn’t seem right, does it?); and it morphs two bodies into one to support Joe’s head in a chaotic composition that doesn’t include a single image or symbol that alludes to Iraq. The photo seems to be asking: is it the angry blacks? betrayed white women? Christians? Who’s causing Joe such a hair raising experience?

It looks like a street encounter, impromptu, in a black neighborhood, where the photographer was smartly quick enough to catch the disconnect between the white folks (the nonchalance of the woman in the rear contrasted with the pained expression on Lieberman’s face) and the black lady, who has asked a serious question and is not satified with the answer she’s getting from Liberman. The lightening in the mural is just icing on the cake for an alert photographer. This one should win a Cartier-Bresson “decisive moment” prize.

“Pharoah Lieberman parts the red sea of blue state voters.”

His hair is doing the same thing Charlton Heston’s hair did after he talked to God for the first time in the Ten Commandments.
(Come to think of it, Charlton Heston ended up a right-wing wacko too!)

It’s electric.
do da do da dodado dah dah!

ummabdulla: “What’s that thing that seems to be growing out of Lieberman’s chin?” From the resolution of the ‘original’ photo in the New Yorker online, it looks to be his tie, blowing back over his shoulder. Tres chic.
The expression on the black woman says ‘you expect me to believe that?’ She’s not open to what he’s saying and his frown indicates he knows he’s in trouble. The woman in the back is probably a campaign worker trying to make a quick escape.
This photographer is very good at dragging in a dramatic background, especially sky and/or weather. This one is a faux sky with lightening. This lightening is supposed to be from god and is apparently striking Liebermann’s head, as if to say “duh!” And placing Liebermann in front of the bible (not the torah/scrolls) and the cross, indicates to this observer that he is rather out of his place in this race. Or maybe it’s saying, ’some of my best friends are christians.’ But for such a savvy pol, I’m wondering why he is allowing this photograph. Does he think it will increase his numbers with black christians? Is he trying to emphasize that he is really socially very right-wing?
Although we can only see it in sillhouette, his face looks like it has been frowning far more than smiling. Frowning faces don’t get elected, right? He also looks very tired. No, weary.

This is the best picture I’ve ever seen of Joe Lieberman. Despite the Second Coming background, he actually looks like a human here, instead of like a Muppet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Bear

I’m not convinced if it is really disgust. It’s almost as if she sees something that could be embarassing and wants desparately to fix it but isn’t sure how to go about it.
“Hmm, should I tell him he has bit lipstick (that is obviously NOT Mrs. Lieberman’s) that is on his collar. . .?”
Who is the extra shoulder and tie? Is he trying to protect Mr. Lieberman? Why is he there? Why isn’t he visible?

I was looking at all the wierd elements of this photo. Everyone has mentioned them. The lightning bolt, the hair, the expressions on everyones face. But am I the only one to notice that there is a second man in the image. Next to Joe there is a man with a goldgreen tie. It looks as if the tie is “growing” from Joe’s chin. The coat of the other man blends into Joe’s coat making it look as if Joe as on two ties. The tie “growing out of Joe’s chin with his frizzy hair makes him look like some kind of Neo-Ancient Egyptian or something. Or maybe some kind of crazy “Uncle Sam”. But it is freaky when combined with the other elements of this photo. This pic is truly amazing.