Brewer/Obama Showdown: a pointed look

There are two is one sides to every story

News must have been pretty slow last Friday because the biggest story was about Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wagging her finger at President Obama on the tarmac when he paid a visit to her state. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the media managed to draw this story entirely from a single photo. Almost every version of the story makes a point of the fact that no one actually heard the two executives' exchange.

Nevertheless, so eager was the legacy media to further the guise of Obama as the benevolent savior to the ungrateful hordes that they whipped up a story of Brewer's belligerence out of practically nothing. Cue the stream of commentaries and editorials decrying Brewer for her "hostility." As such, it should probably come as no surprise that the single photo driving the story is also edited. 

No, there is no Photoshop chicanery, but the image that is most returned on Google Images has been strategically cropped. The full image, which has not made the internet rounds nearly as well, reveals Obama holding an envelope.

So what? Why is this important? Because it provides a sense of chronology when compared to this picture (also in scarce supply online), in which Brewer is holding the envelope. 

Various outlets have reported that the governor handed the president a letter, so we know this picture was taken before the more prevalent one. In this earlier shot, Obama already appears perturbed and possibly confrontational while Brewer is at least affecting a pleasant smile.


Does this matter much? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. But it does show that even in the most trivial of matters, the media cannot resist contorting the facts to the benefit of Dear Leader.

Further reading: Commentarama - You're Not the Boss of Me 

Comments

  1. AndrewPriceFebruary 7, 2012 at 3:26 PM

    Oddly, none of these articles showed up in my dashboard until right now. I suddenly got a notice that there were 20 articles I hadn't read. Weird.

    ReplyDelete
  2. tryanmaxFebruary 7, 2012 at 4:25 PM

    Well, if you happen to get bored... :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. AndrewPriceFebruary 11, 2012 at 1:51 PM

    The thing is, I've seen them. They've all come up on my dashboard before, but they suddenly reappeared. Google is a strange world.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Real Reason Why Are Trucks Getting Bigger

Image
It's not "ego." It's a claim that you encounter a lot—an insult really—that people are buying bigger and bigger trucks to compensate for… something. Here's one particularly cringeworthy example, because the person making it doesn't seem to realize the go-kart he's praising doesn't meet US emissions standards.  whenever americans say that they *need* a massive pickup truck that gets 12mpg just show them the Subaru Sambar utility vs. ego pic.twitter.com/NqexDbQcok — sam (@sam_d_1995) May 11, 2022 In response, a lot of people will defend their big truck purchase by saying they need a larger vehicle for their family, their business, or just because they like it. And to an extent, market forces are partly responsible for the increase in truck sizes, particularly when it comes to features like crew cabs. But it turns out that even a lot of people who like the big trucks don't know the full story of how their trucks got so big. The rest of the story ...
Read more

The Gaffe that Almost Wasn’t

Image
The smear campaign against Cain continues   By now the internet, radio, television, and wagging tongues everywhere are all abuzz over the latest campaign blunder by Herman Cain. But is it really the gaffe everyone says it is? Or was it a selective editing job a la Ed Shultz ? Well, call me cynical, but I’ve seen enough media shenanigans to be suspicious of anything taken out of context and this definitely tripped my radar. In the clip that has gone viral (below), Cain does appear to be caught off-guard by a question on Libya, a topic he ought to have been ready for. My first reaction was to wonder how many clips like this land on editing room floors instead of online. In a world used to hyper-slick video and equally slick candidates, a moment of thought gathering can seem disastrous. Still, this isn’t about a some candidate’s “senior moment.” Rather, it is about a hatchet job gone awry. This clip was released by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel along with the entire half-hour interv...
Read more

Romney’s Pro-Life Position Not So New

Also: Say hello to the “Sev-Con” There’s a NYTimes article out over the weekend that is all the buzz today. The pull-quote du jour is by former Mitt Romney strategist Mike Murphy, who told National Review in 2005 that Romney "is a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly." The preferred pick-apart is that this proves Romney will say and do anything to get elected. And, I admit, it certainly sounds damning. If nothing less, it was a poor choice of words. But this is old news. At the time Murphy issued a statement saying he had been misquoted. I’d say the facts support Murphy’s side of the story. The Times article tries to make more ado about Romney’s pro-life journey than there is. In 1994, when he ran against Ted Kennedy, he did not shy away from his personal opposition to abortion but positioned himself by saying “my personal beliefs, like the personal beliefs of other people, should not be brought into a political campaign.” He lost that race. In 2001, Romney e...
Read more