BAGnewsNotes

Three For The Road

by Chris Maynard

After a 50 minute videoconference with Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, assuring him that his country was not an American client state, President Bush arrives at Andrews Air Force Base Saturday for a short campaign trip.

In the way photographs paint pictures, this one makes Bush look like a small boy in the back of an SUV, although it's only the usual armored limo. Maybe because he stares  from the shadows, or because all we see is his face, he's disembodied, a small icon imbedded in a large hunk of black steel and bulletproof glass. He's untouchable and unreachable, shut off from the surrounding quotidian world.

Then it's onto the tarmac, and suddenly the scale flips.

Now he's bigger than life, the alpha dog bounding up the stairs, his figure popping in the sunlight. If he were the sculpted marble hero at a memorial site, that left hand, instead of gripping the railing, would be clutching an unsheathed sword.

One does wonder exactly to whom he's waving, since Andrews AFB is a transport stop for ranking figures, and for security reasons, is off-limits to the public. For all we know it's just a conditioned response to news cameras, or maybe he's waving to Barney, who still supports him. There is an unsettling sense that the scene is off in a hidden corner somewhere, far away from the rest of the country.
What's striking here is how out of proportion he looks, until we realize that Air Force One, for this trip, is a Gulfstream G5 instead of a 747.

We get so comfortable with the trappings of the office that we forget that somewhere deep in that cocoon is just another guy who woke up as President.                                                                 
                               

After finding an aroused audience in Indiana's Ninth Congressional District, where 4,000 tickets were given to guests selected by workers for Rep. Mike Sodrel, a first-term Congressman in a close race, President Bush then travelled on to Charleston AFB in South Carolina, where several hundred members of the military and their families waited.

He strode out from a cluster of giant C-17s, perfectly triangulated on the airstrip, to a soundtrack of emotional music. And instantly, Mr. Bush was back in miniature, a tiny figure almost lost against the grey fuselages. There was no "Mission Accomplished" banner this time, and no dancing of jigs in a flight suit, but the hulking transport jets did say "Commander-in-Chief" in large thought balloons.

Backed up by military muscle like this, Mr. Bush felt comfortable saying "We have a plan for victory," knowing that no one would snicker. But even as he spoke he took on protective adaptation, spreading his arms like the slanting wings behind him. It looked like a plea to "fly with me," even as poll numbers nose dive.

Imagine this photograph without the airplanes, and it would look like a crowd ambling home after the tractor races, no longer listening to the barker. In campaign shots, too many props so often indicate nothing to say; if his party's record were of achievement rather than division, the man might look a lot taller.

"Kleider Machen Leute", as the old German proverb goes: "Clothes make the man," especially if they fit.

(image 1 & 2: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/A.P.  Oct. 28, 2006.  Andrews Air Force Base, Md.  Via YahooNews.  image 3: Mary Ann Chastain/A.P.  Oct. 28, 2006, in North Charleston, S.C.  Via YahooNews.)

The Partial George Allen

The longer I am in Spain, the more puritanical America seems to look.  I'm sure that impression is exaggerated, however, by all the dirt flying back and forth in the House and Senate campaigns.

The scuzziest example I've seen so far involves last week's attack by Virginia Senator "Macaca" Allen on his opponent, author/screen writer, lawyer, Vietnam Vet and former Naval Secretary Jim Webb.

With his back to the wall in a race that was supposed to be easy, Allen (who keeps looking meaner and phonier by the week) launched a raunchy character strike by publicizing sex scenes out of some of Webb's published fiction.  (Although American politics was never much good at distinguishing fiction from reality, Allen seems to strive for the complete erasure.)

Given the material was too crude for the commercial airwaves, the campaign used the web to bootstrap the trash into the media sphere.  One blast from Drudge, and voila!  Bring on the MSM!  (If you don't mind stooping, I've drudged up Matt's original "news" flash.)

Your Turn: Turning A Phrase

Considering its publication a little over a week before the American election, where is this cover going?  Here are some possibilities to get you started.

This is:

... a subtle poke at Bush/Blair for having dumbed down foreign policy to the slogan level.

... confirmation that the American election has come down to a war referendum.

...  an acknowledgment, now virtually irrefutable by the military and Republicans, that we have to -- somehow -- get out.

... a political reminder (and assist to the conservatives) that the liberals don't have any good answers either.

Regarding the picture, and picking up on the question mark, seems like the helicopter is surely a mirage.

It's your BAG....

(image: unattributed. The Economist - North America Edition.  October 28, 2006. economist.com)

Potemkin Village

by Chris Maynard

On Thursday, as he signed a bill authorizing the Mexican/U.S. border fence (but not the funds to build it), President Bush sounded like a progressive, noting that “Ours is a nation of immigrants" -- just before jumping the political fence, adding "We’re also a nation of law."

Off camera, I'm sure President Bush would admit that a giant fence along the Mexican/U.S. border is not the ideal way to solve immigration problems. But it's election time, and politicians prefer to see how high they can fan the flames to protect America along its newest "front line."

You can't have legislative gestures, however, without real motions to demonstrate teeth.  That's where the Border Patrol comes in.  These photographs recently ran in the Los Angeles Times with an article on the department's training academy in New Mexico. Enrollment this year has climbed to 3600. Seen from a distance, they offer a small Potemkin village. Up close, it looks like an attempt to convince every concerned American that yes, the doors did indeed close after his or her family crossed the border, no matter how long ago they made the trip.

Playing With The Code

I was taking a closer look at the RNC's racist anti-Harold Ford commercial.

Because the ad is so blatant -- associating Ford with ugly stereotypes regarding the black man's sexual appetite and hankering for white women -- one tends to overlook the more subtle touches.  Those spatial, tonal or environmental elements, however, are what reinforce the coding at a more subconscious level.

For example, notice how the dress and the sighting of the two couples is so similar.

In each case, one person is wearing blue (true blue; blue collar; democratic blue; neutral blue; blue jean demin) while the other is (severe; extreme; racially suggestive) black-and-white.  As well, the vista of the sidewalk (which I sliced for emphasis) emphasizes the difference.

And then, doesn't the hunter look a little paramilitary, or survivalist?  And if that's not a little curious, how many people hunt in black face?

As for the main attraction, the implication is that the girl is naked, no?

I also like Josh Marshall's structural breakdown.  His point is that, because the segment with the party girl is inconsistent with the rest of the scenes -- those, done like "man-on-the-street" interviews -- Miss Infidelity "wins" as much by contrast as titillation.

View ad here (via YouTube).
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Update Oct. 28. 9:07 am GMT:  Thanks to the readership for drawing out the sexism, especially in the two shots leading this post.

In the scenes with the couples, the women are the silent ones, either looking on adoringly or staring goofily off into space. So there's another underlying misogynistic message here. In the presence of men, women should be seen and not heard. And women who support Ford are either stupid and misguided (the lone black woman and the liberal-style woman) and/or sluts.

(video frames: Republican National Committee via talkingpointsmemo.com)

Michael J. Fox

The NYT describes it as one of the most powerful political ads ever made.

But then, The Times wipes its feet on it by pigeonholing the spot as primarily an attack ad.  To frame Michael J. Fox side-by-side with Willie Horton is not only disgusting, it misses the whole point of why this ad is shattering.

In less than thirty seconds, Michael offers us an enormous dose of qualities we've hardly seen a genuine political drop of in years.  Passion, genuineness, pain and honesty are the first to come to mind.

For Fox to expose himself and unmask his Parkinsonian symptoms side-effects (they go hand-in-hand, Rush) in the name of a coherent and humane stem cell policy has next-to-nothing to do with the Johnson daisy ad.  The Johnson ad is a simple, two-dimensional (if highly effective) piece of fear mongering -- not unlike the fear-mongering this unqualified and hateful administration has been suffocating us with almost every minute since Bush and his cronies made off with the 2000 election.

In contrast, Mr. Fox is full of feeling and real life.  Maybe Americans have long lost any sense of what intimate, unselfconscious (and yes, partisan) political communication might actually look like?

And then, going back to The Times article, is it our pitiful legacy that the best analogy to describe this ad is to liken it to an Iraq hostage video?

(You Tube Ad video here.)

(screen shots: McCaskill for U.S. Senate - claireonline.com via YouTube)

911

How incredibly sad that, three-and-a-half years after what was supposed to be a quick-and-easy invasion, a Stryker armored vehicle is what passes for a Baghdad police car; the peace (if you dare call it that) is best managed through a gunner's site; and the only dependable patrolman is an anxious American G.I.

Reporter Michael Gordon and Photographer Jim Wilson filed this story on the military situation ("To Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key to Mission") for the NYT.  Sobering isn't the word.  Bottom line, our "last best" strategy of "clear and hold" isn't working because American forces can't trust the loyalty of Baghdad's police, and Iraqi Army forces refuse to serve in the city.

In the slide show, take a special look at the Iraqi policemen.  It's a study of people present in body but not in mind.

Although dry and procedural, this image captures the whole horribly sorry situation.  The caption reads as follows:

Two Iraqi officers, from different checkpoints in Baghdad, discovered that their radios did not have matching frequencies.

With Baghdad descending into not just ethnic and religious, but tribal factionalism, we are offered a cluster of Iraqi officers, no two in the same uniform, standing right next to each other, but hopelessly lost as to how to communicate.

(images: Jim Wilson/NYT.  Baghdad.  October 23, 2006. nyt.com)

The Gloves Come Off

A hat tip to Rolling Stone for bypassing the election handicapping, "will-they-or-won't-they" punditry over majorities and minorities, and just flat-out laying into this Congress.

Sure, one party rule has driven the institution to lowly depths.  Given the pervasiveness of red-blue polarization, however, the shame of Congress tends to be mostly framed in terms of a Republican political problem, with less focus on the disgrace of an institution.

As remedy, the new RS bookends its previous "Worst President Ever" cover/story with its complement,  "The Worst Congress Ever."

Given The BAG's visual eye (and the fact an election is barreling down), I took a particular interest in the accompanying feature, The "10 Worst Congress People."  Each of the members (9 of the 10 being Repubs, by the way) are profiled for their excesses, indiscretions and abuses.  Accompanying each is also a quirky piece of animation exploiting a silly cultural analogy or underlying character aspect.

If these visuals are mostly sophomoric, I thought the send-up of James Sensenbrenner seemed particularly apt.  Besides nailing the Congressman for his attitude and pegging the overall personality of a badly ingrown Republican leadership, this transformation presents an inescapably obvious metaphor:

We not only need new governance, we need a whole new culture of governance.

(image: unattributed.  Rolling Stone Magazine.  October 2006.  rollingstone.com)

Just Prey

 
 

by Chris Maynard

In these days of high tech gadgets and gizmos, sometimes an old-fashioned telephoto lens makes a great stand-in for a polygraph machine. There are no electrodes to hook up, and most politicians willingly submit to the test. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, demonstrates its simplicity, not to mention its effectiveness, in a Capitol hallway after testifying before the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

He said "I told the committee the same thing that I have told many of you," which admittedly covers a lot of possibilities. Boehner, of course, is famous for first saying he'd alerted Speaker Dennis Hastert to the problems of Rep. Mark Foley's relationships with Congressional pages. Then, on the same day, he said he wasn't totally sure he'd told Hastert. Then, on October 3, after the Washington Times ran an editorial calling for Hastert's resignation, Boehner switched back, saying "I believe I talked to the speaker and he told me it had been taken care of. And my position is it's in his corner, it's his responsibility."

Part of the power of news conference photographs is that we see the physical without being sidetracked by the verbal; consequently the image tends to have a longer shelf life than the questions answered or dodged. Ask anyone who saw the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debates and they'll say Nixon looked shifty and needed a shave; very few remember what either candidate said. Did Ed Muskie cry at a 1972 press conference or was he brushing snowflakes off his cheek?

So now with a long lens trained on him, Mr. Boehner watches the wind, looking for eddies, alert for any reason to modify his tale again. He  looks as if he's searching for a bus to leap in front of. In the meantime, he purses his lips, looks to the right, looks to the left, looks anywhere but at the camera. His lips and tongue seem to be run by remote control. His eyebrows bounce. It isn't pretty. He looks cornered, like a prey at the end of a hunt, treed and trying to figure out how the hell he's going to save his skin.
 
(image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. October 18, 2006. Washington. nyt.com)

Down To Business

(Unfortunately, it gets bigger.)

How eager is BushCo to portray that Iraq policy change is on the march?

Consider this snippet from yesterday's NYT story:

In his radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush emphasized that the administration was staying flexible in its planning and would “make every necessary change to prevail.”

Saying the goal of victory was “unchanging,” he added: “What is changing are the tactics we use to achieve that goal. Our commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy, particularly in Baghdad.”

Not that I understand what any of that means, but the passage sure does emphasize the "c" word.

And then, what about this shot on the White House web site yesterday?  The Administration was driving home a point with just the single pic on the photo gallery.  And what a clear message it was: 'This shit is getting fixed even if we have to put on jackets and come in on Saturday!'

I had a few other observations, associations, fantasies.

... What if the Cheney "Big Brother"/head of the table treatment is a set-up?  Yeah, maybe they're ignoring him so that, with the blame game in full swing (example 1, 2), Bush keeps the option of hanging the whole Iraq/neocon "vision thing" around the Veep's neck.

... How long are we to buy the story that Cheney's remote location is a security measure?  It's one-third paranoia, and two-thirds "couldn't be bothered."

... There's Rummy talking to nobody -- as has been the case for the past five years.

... I'm always a little worried about military planning when I see Pace putting maximum distance between himself and Rumsfeld.

... Who needs Woodward to spell out the Administration's dynamic?  It's right here.  Cheney and Rumsfeld manage the White House minions while Bush takes up the foreground posing with the uniforms.

(image: Eric Draper/White House.  White House. October 21, 2006. whitehouse.gov)