Perhaps I was Wrong About The Atlantic

Yesterday, when I linked to the Photoshop from the Atlantic of Speaker Boehner being hauled off in handcuffs pictured above, I first tried to Google on the source of the photo. I had assumed it was a Photoshop of the Capitol or DC police, but didn’t have much luck. I also searched on “Checkerboard police caps,” with similarly poor results.

However, Prof. William A. Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog has tracked down the original photo:

As startling as the image may seem coming from a mainstream publication, consider that the source of the image was a photo of an Irish Republican Army terrorist, Colin Duffy, who was charged with the killing of British soldiers (he later was acquitted):

Notice the photo of Colin Duffy is the exact same photo The Atlantic used as the source for the photoshop.

I’m sure the author and editors at The Atlantic knew exactly what they were doing, even if most of the readers didn’t pick up on the Boehner being equated to a specific accused murderer.

Click over to see the Atlantic’s source photo.

Perhaps I’ve been judging the Atlantic wrong. While we know what Republican Congressman Peter King is reported to think about the Irish Republican Army, what does the left think about them? Perhaps a bit of context is in order. I know Leonard Bernstein had no problem inviting the Black Panthers over to his Park Ave. duplex for tea, canopies, and a little Spring Fascism Preview, to borrow from a classic early National Lampoon cover. Ted Kennedy was pretty cool with the Soviet Union. In 2002, Sen. Patty Murray said she dug Osama bin Laden for “building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities”. David Bonior and Jim McDermott, were big fans of Saddam Hussein. And Barack Obama certainly has his favorite Weatherman. So if the leftwing consensus on the IRA is along similar lines, and having been chastised by Mr. Obama’s attacks on free speech and journalism, perhaps the Atlantic’s Photoshop is meant to build sympathy for Speaker Boehner in his measured responses to what has been remarkably testy rhetoric from Mr. Obama, not to incite a citizens’ arrest or violence towards him, as the Atlantic previously implied in 2011 with its attacks on Gov. Palin.

Context is everything — and so is subtext. And I’m glad we got to the bottom of this one.

(I keed, I keed. Of course the Atlantic hates Speaker Boehner’s guts. I mean, for one thing, the guy is a Catholic, not a Scientologist, for Xenu’s sake.)