There’s no doubt that the Air Force One flight over New York on April 27th was a huge debacle, but there’s one element of the response to it that I find slightly offputting. After all of the fauxtography scandals of the past four or five years, and the left’s invented, but still resonant “plastic turkey” story, wouldn’t the Blogosphere — or at least the starboard side of the Blogosphere beat President Obama like a bongo drum if they discovered that a photo of Air Force One zooming over the Statue of Liberty was a Photoshopped mockup?
That’s one of the topics discussed in the newest segment from PJTV.
My take? I don’t fault the White House for flying AF1 over the Statue of Liberty to shoot some PR photos, but why on earth, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, couldn’t the White House have alerted the New York media before the flight?
Update: In the comments below, “New Caledonia” explains one way the White House could have successfully used Photoshop:
No one would complain if the White House released a Photoshopped image of AF1 with the caption “Photo illustration by Joe Shlabotnik, USAF,” or some such.
As I believe Andrew Ian Dodge suggested to Bill Whittle in the PJTV segment, it sounds like the Obama White House thought it was playing six-dimensional chess with this one, and was thinking about 50 moves ahead instead five or ten, or simply the next logical step.
No one would complain if the White House released a Photoshopped image of AF1 with the caption “Photo illustration by Joe Shlabotnik, USAF,” or some such.