Back in late 2001, just as the Blogosphere was getting started, Glenn Reynolds proffered some advice for those who wanted to dip their toes into the pool:
Any time you start to doubt yourself, and wonder if you’re fit for the big leagues of American thought and opinion, you can just read The Times and be thankful that the standards of the big leagues aren’t so high.
And they’re remarkably tolerable when it comes to failure and duplicity — and the bigger the better, as long as your ideology is simpatico, of course.
Witness: Remember leftwing photographer Jill Greenberg, who last year admitted to deliberately shooting unflattering images of Sen. John McCain , for his cover photo on the Atlantic and then on her own Website Photoshopped those images to make a former Navy flier and Vietnam POW literally appear as a bloodthirsty monster on her Website?
Who when interviewed, replied:
The pictures speak for themselves. I took the opportunity to create an image which shows my feelings about the Republican administration and possible continuation of the policies of the Bush/Cheney White House.
Say, whatever happened to her?
Time magazine hired her to photograph Glenn Beck for its latest cover story.
Beck is apparently being a pretty good sport about the cover, but it’s a also a useful reminder that, in a time when Manhattan’s unemployment in general is in double-digits, and the legacy media is hemorrhaging readers, who’s considered on the A-list of old media.
She fits in perfectly with TIME’s photographic ‘ethics’.
Fortunately, few outside of waiting rooms will see TIME or remember the cover story and photograph for long.
Frank J. De Maria, the vice president of corporate communications at Newsweek, issued this statement Wednesday in response:
This from the NYTimes blog:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/essay-9/
Newsweek editors took a photo shot of Dick Cheney and his family as he carved meat for a meal, cropped out the rest of the family, tightened up the shot on Cheney, altered the color and intensity of the blood on the carving board. The photographer objected saying it was unethical to invert the impression of the original image in order to pursue an agenda.
Frank J. De Maria, the vice president of corporate communications at Newsweek, issued this statement Wednesday in response:
“We doubt any reasonable reader would, in David’s phrase, think something “sinister, macabre, or even evil” was going on in that image as presented. Yes, the picture has been cropped, an accepted practice of photographers, editors and designers since the invention of the medium. We cropped the photograph using editorial judgment to show the most interesting part of it. Is it a picture of the former vice president cutting meat? Yes, it is. Has it been altered? No. Did we use the image to make an editorial point — in this case, about the former vice president’s red-blooded, steak-eating, full-throated defense of his views and values? Yes, we did.”
Not a hint of introspection or apology – rather an in-your-face rant spat back at the offended photographer. Alarming too were the number of commenters who felt that since it was Cheney there are no rules in effect.
Anyone that defends anything Cheney has short memory. Cheney actions merit no defense.
And art is challenging and sometimes outside the normal boundaries. It is also meant to be offensive and disconcerting. Almost all great advancement of art has been done by renegades, whether it is Newton, Picasso, Jackson, Mozart, etc..
Michael,
Given one of the altered photos that Greenberg produced of McCain last year, I’m reminded of James Lileks’ axiom: “When art contains s***, we should take it at its word.”
“Epater Les Bourgeois” is an artistic philosophy that’s almost a century old. It’s clapped out and reactionary, as are its supporters.
Ed
Propaganda only lives within its context, only speaks within its context. Mozart transcends the eighteenth century Hapsburg court.
Epic fail, Michael.