Dennis Dunleavy

Handshakes, hugs and hoopla -- What pictures don't tell us

Photo Credit: Jim Young/Reuters

In a political cycle of relentless photo-ops, countless handshakes, hugs and flag-waving hoopla, it is refreshing to see beyond the candidates to the more human side of life. Young's picture, showing two tired children holding campaign signs in Winterset, Iowa on December 22, offers some comic relief at a time when everything we see and hear out of Iowa or New Hampshire these days seems to little more than create more apathy toward the political process. Thousands of images are transmitted to news organizations each day, but what do they really say about a candidate?

One assumption is that the pictures say very little about the candidate's ability to lead a nation. Instead, what most of the images represent are more about the what the campaigns and media thinks the audience wants to see.  At times, there is a glimpse of a human side of a candidate, but for the overwhelming majority of pictures just tastes like a spoonful of cold canned peas. The candidates attempt to project and protect his or her political image, something often proscribed by media handlers. The media, for their part, dutifully carry the message and image, out in the public domain. But increasingly, the message lands flat or is met with incredulity and suspicion.

Pictures frame, freeze and fix a moment in time -- a moment, which has traditionally been grated a lot of credit as a faithful representation of reality and truth.  In a political climate where there seems to be more similarities than differences between those seeking power in this country, pictures become a form of mind-numbing anesthesia.

The same thing could be said for other events.  How many images have we seen now of President Bush visiting the hospital beds of soldiers injured in Iraq.  Is there anything significant in Bush's patting the head of a bed-ridden Army Sgt. John Wayne Cornell of Lansing, Mich., and posing for a photo-op?


Photo Credit: White House

One way of looking at the image is that president would like us to see how much he really cares about the soldiers fighting in the Middle East.  Another way of looking at the picture is as propaganda: Go to Iraq, get hurt, get a pat on the head from the Commander-In-Chief.

It's hard not to be a little disrespectful or cynical at times when photo-ops masquerade as reality. In fact, this critique should not be viewed as another Bush-bashing ploy. It doesn't matter who's in office -- the response, and the pictures that represent the response, are almost always predictable.

Photo-Op: Bush and the Irony of a Can of Beans

Photo Credit: Jason Reed/Reuters

This picture reminds me of one of those famous credit card commercials:

The scene: A food bank in Anywhere, USA
Roll Camera: The President, with a sour expression, stands before the camera.
Voice Over: The melodious baritone voice of the announcer comes in.

• Oxxford hand-tailored suit: $2,000 - $14,000
• Haircut: $30 - $60
• Bush's Best Beans: $1.59
• Cost of the War in Iraq:  $200 million a day

The Irony of a Presidential Photo-Op: Priceless

Is the president really mugging for the camera with a can of beans? Could the visual metaphor be any more perfect at this time of year? 

As Americans prepare to gobble up more than 1.6 billion pounds of turkey, 1 billion pounds of pumpkin, and more than 800,000 tons of beans this Thanksgiving, the photo-op signifies what appears to be another surreal moment for the Bush presidency.

While, Bush symbolically pardoned the White House turkey this week while more than 35 million Americans, including 12.6 million children, will experience hunger. Further, more than 38 million Americans will be eligible to receive Food Stamps. In 2006, The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that requests for emergency food assistance increase by 7 percent across the country.

There is a significant different between how images denote and connote meaning. As cultural theorist Stuart Hall suggests, pictures are encoded with symbolic meaning. But it is ultimately up to the viewer to "unpack" or decode what the symbols mean. Much of this decoding is determined by context, convention, as well as the disposition of the viewer. Ultimately, the ability to make sense of a picture becomes contingent upon how that picture resonates in every day life for the viewer.  For me, the expression "full of beans" comes to mind. Originally,  "full of beans" originally meant to be full of energy and high spirits, but over time the phrase has come to represent something more akin to someone who is being less than genuine or honest -- basically someone who is "full of it."

Ultimately, any analysis of this sort probably won't amount a "hill of beans."

Nevertheless, pictures should provoke thoughts, and in turn, hopefully, thoughts will lead to action.

 

When the typewriter stumbled into the newsroom

It is easy to forget that journalists have been dealing with technological innovation since before the invention of the printing press. Today, while looking through the card catalog of old newspaper clippings with students in the University library I came upon an interesting example of one early adopter of a revolutionary, for its time, technology – the typewriter.

The article, found in the Ashland, Ore., Daily Tidings of 1887, was reprinted from the New York Graphic. The article tells the story of how  humorist and journalism pioneer David Ross Locke commonly known by his pseudonym “Petroleum V. Nasby”, became the first editor to use a typewriter in the newsroom. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but in Locke's case it may have been something else all together.

                Nasby and the typewriter

The first editor in the United States to throw aside his quill or pencil for the typewriter was D. R. Locke, “Petroleum V. Nasby,” the editor and proprietor of the Toledo Blade. A dozen years ago, when The Cincinnati Gazette and Commercial, Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Globe Democrat were the only Republican journals of any note west of New York, Locke was a power in the newspaper world. The circulation of the weekly edition of the publication founded by Horace Greeley, and his “Confederate Cross Roads" letters were widely read and copied. Locke had always been a heavy drinker, but his success seemed only to spar him on to renewed efforts in the anti-prohibition line. He made it a point to get “half shot” before breakfast of a morning, be “three sheets in the wind” by dinner and wind up the evening too full for utterance. Although possessed of an iron constitution, whiskey gradually undermined his nerves, and after a time he was no longer able to hold a pen and turn out legible manuscript. He tried dictation, but his ideas did not seem to fully concentrate in the presence of a second person, and for a time he seriously contemplated reformation. While in such a plight he chance to see a typewriter of the crude style of the day, The thought came to him like a flash that he had found a way out of his dilemma he bought the instrument, and in the course of a few weeks could knock off  “copy” as rapidly and far more decipherably than he could with a pen in his most gifted days.