BAGnewsNotes

What Time Do The Checks (I Mean, The Guests) Arrive?

Must be WAPO's Milbank and Cillizza dressed for the Salon.

(image: from aptly named "Mouthpiece Theater.")

The Meaning Of Michael

Interesting choice for the Newsweek cover after five days of Michael Jackson-inspired media saturation. After so many images evoking Jackson's pain, the schism between his public and private life, and his twisted physical evolution, Newsweek wipes it all away with a visual "last word" embracing the tactic of regression.

With the recently redesigned magazine battling for survival and gripped by its own identity crisis, the cover -- especially in the context of the headline -- is the equivalent of comfort food.

Not only does the photo let us off the hook in confronting any complexity in regards to "the meaning of Michael," the image -- serving up what reads like a sensitive, untouched, all-knowing, black-is-beautiful old soul -- offers a simple, soothing, innocent time-out from from things like the brutal recession; the health care crisis; the wars; global warming -- in other words, just about everything else that is fractious, complicated and all-too-much-work to make real meaning out of these days.

(image: still looking. Michael Jackson Newsweek Cover July 13 2009)

TIME Cover:Iran vs. Iran vs. Iran

Honestly, after posting the similarly-situated Economist Iran cover earlier this week, I mostly skipped over the latest from TIME. After catching Daryl Lang's post and reader comments at PDN, however, I got a lot more interested.

Lang and the PDN readership chose to concentrate on the technical and ethical questions of why TIME cryptically labeled the cover as "digitally altered." Writes PDN commenter TC:

Why did Time not call this picture a "photo illustration" and be done with it? If this image was as "digitally altered" as it looks (to me) to be then it has no business being called a news photo. As a former picture editor my yardstick has always been -- levels, curves (contrast control), dodging, burning and color correction is OK, anything beyond is forbidden for a news photograph. Once you cross that line you lose credibility for everything you do forward.

Your Turn: Putting the Uprising in Focus

With the backlash in Iran one week old (curious there isn't a common name for it yet), I'm both looking for that iconic/chyrystallizing image (which I don't think has emerged yet) and I'm curious how the print media will start to put it "in a frame."

Specifically, I'm wondering how you read this (which just came out today), and how well or poorly it does the job?

(image: Ben Curtis /AP)

The Colbert/Newsweek Iraq Cover (or, Someone We Admire Yelling It At Us)

To appreciate this cover image, you need to consider it alongside Colbert's admonition in signing off his explanation for editing the current Newsweek issue:

“Now go read my magazine. Although to get the full effect, you should have someone you admire yell it at you.”

Best known for wearing a persona, Stephen Colbert (from the neck up) turns himself into a grunt -- and a national billboard -- not just to illuminate, but to shout at us (through the language of parody, of course) about the men and women who have been forsaken for carrying out a forsaken war.

If the tendency is to summarize Colbert's message, in big capital letters, as "Don't forget Iraq," the image (emphasizing that amazing "are you getting this?" eye, and that "we're so miserable and disappointed" frown) is as much about the boots -- or, specifically, the heads (with those vulnerable skulls) -- on the ground.

Inside Out and Upside Down

I didn't like it before (in my "day one" post on the new administration) and I don't like the picture now.

First, with America's health care system on the operating table and the policy issues so complex, why such fixation on the politics?

Second, if this cover/cover story must necessarily concentrate on "the sell," why the focus on Rahm's hardball nature; the headline's intimation of exclusion; and the grainy surveillance-like capture of a whisper session? As a visual narrative, you could say this cover (at least, its photo-illustration on the web, since I haven't seen the print version) is playing "the Chicago card."

Your Turn: The Wise Latina

Ohm my, talk about mixed metaphors!

The place to turn for a thoughtful and robust deconstruction of National Review's racial oddity? Easy, it's the BAGnewsNotes readership.

(h/t: CP. illustration: still looking)

Our Sunday News Show Roundup

'Meet the Press' for May 31, 2009. Patrick Leahy, Jeff Sessions on Sotomayor nomination. Transcript. Video.

Your Turn: Latina Justice

To what extent is this headline a slam, picking up on the wing-nut meme that Sotomayor is a (reverse) racist?

One meaning of the headline speaks to identity and pride: that she's a Latina and also a potential Justice. Another implication, however, is that Sotomayor -- given the infamous quote and now the right-wing meme -- will be dispensing "Latina justice." Is it possible that even the use of the "Latina" label as a label, at this point, conjures the wanna-be controversy? And then, the subhead is interesting too. Obviously Sotomayor would change the court. So, what are they getting at here? (And is TIME, given the third article title, hinting the nomination itself is a "showdown over Affirmative Action?")

And then, I'm interested in your take on the illustration, and the use of an illustration as opposed to a photograph. Is an illustration more stereotypical in some way? Is this one? Or is there nothing to it?

Although we've had plenty of opportunity here to explore subtle and not-so-subtle African-American media stereotypes in the political sphere (case in point), we've spent relatively little time looking at the framing of (male or female) Hispanics.

Perhaps this is the true significance of this nomination.

That 'Latina woman'

Okay, here we go.

What we see here is the right-wing entering the media bloodstream (courtesy of CNN.) Pairing an almost eight-year-old quote with this photo fished from the file, you can see how the media, channeling Gingrich and Limbaugh, can suggest Sotomayor as someone angry, bitter -- even "racist." (You can also see how this plays just by consuming the image with the beginning of the headline, 'Latina woman,' which is as far as some people get.)

And then, look how much assistance you can offer with just a "may," a "could" and a "but."