If it's hard to believe the political situation that the Obama administration has fallen to, perhaps the explanation lies in the initial expectations. The mainstream Media treated him like the messiah. His adoration in Europe was even more unrealistic.
Back then I started to notice how consistently the Media photographed him: his eyes were always inclined at about 25 degrees above the horizontal. I wouldn't have expected his eyes to be looking at the floor of course, but his eyes never looked horizontally at the camera either, like a normal mortal's would.
It was easy to recall the famous painting of Christ in profile, looking upward towards heaven, which used to hang in an honored spot in many Americans' houses. When that image popped to mind, it seemed like fair game to poke fun at the Media's adoration of Obama. (A political cartoonist could have achieved immortality if, during those salad days of post-inaugural euphoria, he had drawn Obama in a humble white robe, facing his backside to the camera, as Christ was usually portrayed in the sword-and-sandal movie epics of the 1950s.)
Was I just imagining it or was candidate and president Obama consciously trying to sound like Martin Luther King? In either case, he wasn't very good at it. MLK had a fine southern Negro preacher's cadence to his speech that Obama couldn't hit. Still, it was a relief to Americans -- even to Republicans whether they would admit it or not -- that they had an articulate president instead of a tongue-tied dolt like Bush.
Back then I started to notice how consistently the Media photographed him: his eyes were always inclined at about 25 degrees above the horizontal. I wouldn't have expected his eyes to be looking at the floor of course, but his eyes never looked horizontally at the camera either, like a normal mortal's would.
It was easy to recall the famous painting of Christ in profile, looking upward towards heaven, which used to hang in an honored spot in many Americans' houses. When that image popped to mind, it seemed like fair game to poke fun at the Media's adoration of Obama. (A political cartoonist could have achieved immortality if, during those salad days of post-inaugural euphoria, he had drawn Obama in a humble white robe, facing his backside to the camera, as Christ was usually portrayed in the sword-and-sandal movie epics of the 1950s.)
Was I just imagining it or was candidate and president Obama consciously trying to sound like Martin Luther King? In either case, he wasn't very good at it. MLK had a fine southern Negro preacher's cadence to his speech that Obama couldn't hit. Still, it was a relief to Americans -- even to Republicans whether they would admit it or not -- that they had an articulate president instead of a tongue-tied dolt like Bush.
Since noticing the 25-degrees-above-horizontal syndrome my eyes latched onto photographs of other politicians over the years. I am not making an issue of how biased the mainstream Media always was; that's an old story. What I wanted to know is whether the photography reveals their biases more than their prose or talk.
During the 1980's I was reading an article about president Reagan in US News and World Report. I knew it was a Republican magazine, but I didn't know how Republican until I saw the side-by-side photographs of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in that article. Kennedy was coming out of the water in swimming trunks; he was skinny and good looking as a young man, but by the time of his presidency less-than-perfect health and middle-aged paunch had finally caught up with him. The photograph of Reagan, as a much older man, showed him in jeans and a work shirt, chopping wood on his ranch. He looked like the model he had once been in his young manhood.
Are photographs more influential than talk or prose? It's easy to confuse Cause and Effect. If Obama is no longer photographed looking 25 degrees above the horizontal, is that because the Media no longer adores him, or are they merely responding to his low poll ratings?
During the 1980's I was reading an article about president Reagan in US News and World Report. I knew it was a Republican magazine, but I didn't know how Republican until I saw the side-by-side photographs of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in that article. Kennedy was coming out of the water in swimming trunks; he was skinny and good looking as a young man, but by the time of his presidency less-than-perfect health and middle-aged paunch had finally caught up with him. The photograph of Reagan, as a much older man, showed him in jeans and a work shirt, chopping wood on his ranch. He looked like the model he had once been in his young manhood.
Are photographs more influential than talk or prose? It's easy to confuse Cause and Effect. If Obama is no longer photographed looking 25 degrees above the horizontal, is that because the Media no longer adores him, or are they merely responding to his low poll ratings?
Sometimes the most lasting images of presidents are actual photographs; other times they arise mentally from situations that are easy to visualize. For instance when it was announced recently that Obama would install solar panels on the White House roof, the Media was quite naughty in showing a 1970's picture of Jimmy Carter with his solar panels. No doubt Obama would have preferred allusions to the Comeback Kid, Bill Clinton.
Accurate or not, images linger. We remember Jimmy Carter's cardigan sweater, his preachiness about energy usage, and his "Malaise" speech. (Check me on this but I think it's true that he never actually used the word.) Perhaps in the future people will look backwards to Obama and remember him sneaking back home early from the Copenhagen climate conference in order to escape a Washington snowstorm. How naughty the Media would be if they accompany any mention of that episode with a picture of Jimmy Carter in a canoe, swatting at a killer rabbit.
Comments