Taste is famously unaccountable, but that doesn’t entirely explain Atlantic‘s employment of self-described “hard core Dem” photographer Jill Greenberg to image Arizona Senator John McCain for their October issue. The image the magazine used was inoffensive in itself, but Ms. Greenberg didn’t stop there, framing McCain in some frankly unflattering and unprofessional ways and then publishing them on her blog – no doubt to expected approbation!
Says the American Digest:
These images are, to any reasonably decent person, simply political pornography. There’s just no other way to parse them.
To say Ms. Greenberg’s use of this material in this way is “unprofessional” and does the subject (John McCain) and the client (The Atlantic Monthly) a disservice is to vastly understate the case. Not only has Ms. Greenberg exposed The Atlantic to charges of bias it may well have not intended, it turns out she was engaged in dealing with Senator McCain falsely as well. She has, indeed, bragged about it to PDNPulse, a professional photographers’ journal.
Wouldn’t be the first time that Greenberg was accused of pornography: A few years back she stripped and traumatized 30-odd toddlers for political purposes, calling that “art.”
In another context, Peggy Noonan wrote:
Most crucially, the snobbery of it, the meanness of it, reminded the entire country, for the first time in a decade, what it is they don’t like about the left. Really, America had forgotten. Mr. Obama’s friends reminded them. Unforgettably.
Lot of that going around.
Did I call this, or what?
Update: More like this.
The filth of the left is mindboggling. It is not just a lack of class—it is foul derangement.
I prefer to think of it as a kind of perpetually adolescent self-absorption on the part of the lefties.
Personally, I would hope that this picture is the one which Putin and the Members-Only guy in Iran think of when McCain comes to mind, which can only be a net positive. As Jim Treacher said on his blog today, “this is supposed to make me like him less?”
What baffles me is why is a ‘major’ magazine hiring an outside photographer to take their cover photo. Don’t they have at least one photographer on their staff and their own studio?
1) Do they usually contract out their cover work?
2) Do they not bother to check the background of the photographer they contract out to?
Regardless of the answer to 1), not knowing the agent they trust their cover work to seems entirely inprobable. Which tells me they hired out intentionally, knowing the photographer, to be able later to plead innocence in the result. I think it was a set-up from the start.
Last questions: Isn’t McCain’s staff responsible for providing his security? Shouldn’t they have Googled her name before leaving their charge under her direction?
It seems to me if his staff had exercised good situational awareness, she never would have gotten within ten meters of the man. I hope this episode lites a fire under some people.
Pray for his safety, and for the alertness of his staff.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
And yet Obama’s camp was in high dudgeon over the weekend about McCain’s slanderous, sleazy campaign of lies.
Like Obama hasn’t approved an ad recently that pokes fun at McCain for confessing he doesn’t use the computer or know how to use e-mail – something that is related to his POW injuries and not because he’s behind the times. Something the Obama camp could have found out for themselves with a simple Google search.
But with people like Jill Greenberg and The Atlantic in the tank for them – why should they have to bother with fact-checking.
This has to be one of the dirtiest campaigns in my memory – and that’s saying alot since the Dems usually do play dirty tricks couched as “honesty”.
Peter W: It is my understanding that most magazines contract out their covers and major interior illustrations to independent artists and photographers. They have their own art departments to do graphics, layout work, etc, but most of the original work is produced by outsiders. That said, the people in those art departments are competent professionals: Although it’s *possible* that they didn’t know about Jill Greenberg’s ultra-partisan work, it is utterly inconceivable that they failed to notice the techniques Greenberg used to produce the, shall we say, less-than-flattering photo that appeared on the magazine cover.
They knew exactly what they were getting with Greenberg. This just allows them to distance themselves from the photo, if it hits the fan. Kind of reminds me of the cheap shots that Vanity Fair had taken of Miley Cyrus. They get to profit from the sensationalism while not having to take the blame.
Potent team, that Obama and MSM make. Charlie Gibson mwith them glasses? LOL. What grown man goes by Charlie? I grew bored after the first 3 minutes- so did Sarah I think….
Personally, I like the simple, head-on you tube statement of fact better though. Lays it all out- even a caveman like me can understand:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22dear+obama%22&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#
b2
Peter W.,
pst314 is right here. There was a discussion on a PDN blog concerning this cover that I was reading about a week ago, and most of the user comments were split between savaging Greenberg and supporting her decision to conduct the shoot in this way.
Furthermore, I am with pst314 here. McCain’s people should have figured out who they were dealing with prior to arriving.
Photography is something of an (read: I could sponsor a LeMans team and it would be cheaper) amateur photographer with serious delusions of grandeur, and I can tell you that McCain’s people may also not be at fault. Studio lighting is phenomenally difficult to set up and utilize properly. To someone not familiar with the aspects of how flashes, boxes, and reflectors work, it can be somewhat daunting. So his people aren’t entirely to blame.
Frankly, what I see here is an intentional sh**-box job of lighting someone who deserves a fair shot by someone who knows far better. I’ve seen first year black and white students produce better imagery through sheer incompetence than what Greenberg produced as an alternate to the published cover.
Insofar as the Atlantic cover they actually ran is concerned, I actually like it. (Hang on to the flamethrowers for a minute.) For one, it is somewhat iconic, second it gives McCain the sort air you’d expect from a wizend, elder statesman. Furthermore, I think it also depicts (in an unintentional way) the fatigue he is feeling at the moment with a party trying to pull him away from the substance he’s so staunchly supported in the past.
But that’s just an artistic opinion and probably won’t go over well. Meh.
[...] Neptunus Lex posts The Atlantic’s Obama and McCain covers side by side. [...]