More Mainstream Media Nonsense….

Coming unsurprisingly, this time, from Fox News, who are giving a “fair and balanced” airing to Sarah Palin’s camp complaining that her Newsweek photo is “unretouched.” First of all, either you want to be treated like a beauty queen or a politician. You can’t have it both ways. Vanity is unbecoming in a politician. Secondly, what’s truly ironic is that FOX News itself has been under scrutiny in the past for distorting Obama photos. As usual, those in the most fragile of glass houses are the first to hurl stones.

Judging a Magazine by Its Cover

Harold Ford Jr. talks about the controversy surrounding the latest New Yorker cover featuring Barack Obama dressed as a muslim, fist bumping his wife who is dressed as a terrorist while a flag burns in the fireplace. An outcry has arisen declaring this cover to be offensive.

It could not be more clear that this cover is a parody and it is satirizing how ridiculous some of the accusations leveled against Obama are. This is nothing new for the New Yorker by any means. In fact, a cover a few months ago featured Hillary and Obama in bed together both reaching for that “3 AM” phone. No one then suggested that it would make people believe that these two candidates were really sleeping together, and no one should imagine that this cover will reinforce notions that Obama is somehow in league with our enemies.

A popular way that Republicans mobilize the less than intellectual portions of their base is by suggesting that if Democrats were in power, America would somehow hand over the keys to Main Street to our enemies and that we would all be speaking Arabic (or Russian, or Chinese, what have you). Despite the fact that all of our greatest Wartime leaders were Democrats, this nonsensical argument holds water with the lowest common denominators out there and this cover simply shines a light on that. As to the suggestion that people who somehow believe Obama is a muslim terrorist will be reinforced by this cover? I have news for everyone. Those people are not reading the New Yorker.

Follow the Money

The latest big story coming from the campaign trail is that Barack Obama has reneged on his promise to use Public financing for his campaign. What this means is that he is not subject to public limits on how much money he can take in and what he can do with it. In addition, with private money comes the fear of private interests.

That’s fine, but the media is trying to make this play as a flip flop on the order of “I did not have sex with that woman,” or “no new taxes,” which it just is not. It’s a strategic move which will probably have no effect on his ability to govern and does very little to impugn his integrity. Hopefully a real story will come along soon and bury this one. In the meantime, watch the clip and judge for yourself. Be sure to stay tuned for the classic New York Post’s “punderful” headlines in the middle, just about all that tabloid has ever been good for.

King in Vogue

The latest issue of Vogue has spurred some controversy. Critics claim that the cover image, depicting baskeball player LeBron “King” James with an angry grimace, arm around smiling supermodel Gisele Bundchen, is racist, intentionally recalling the image of supergorilla King Kong.

In this case, the racism is in the eye of the beholder. Donny Deutsch has it exactly right. The cover depicts a stereotype. A correct one: Of a top-level athlete. Top-level athletes are aggressive. They growl. They scream. They are intense. That’s how they get to be top athletes. Just like supermodels get to be supermodels by smiling and looking pretty.

The idea that this was somehow an intentionally racist attempt to depict LeBron as King Kong with Giselle as his Fay Wray is ludicrous, as is the idea that this cover promotes a “black man wants to take our white women” stereotype. He’s not even looking at her and she is clearly not in any distress.

In fact, I think it’s the people who look at that picture and see a scary aggressive black man who’s going to “take our women”, or the people who see a giant ape, that are the problem, not the people at Vogue.