obama » Absurd Intellectual

Shooting with a silencer: Camera noise, the Jacobsen Blimp, and why those Osama/Obama photos were staged

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 4 May 2011 Modern Life, Photography

May 042011

Did your local newspaper run a photo of U.S. President Barack Obama, addressing the nation about the death of Osama bin Laden?

Well, no, it didn’t.

What your local newspaper actually ran was a staged photo, taken a few minutes after the president gave his speech. Obama walked back out to the podium, and faked talking for a few minutes, while photographers snapped away.

According to Al Tomkins, writing on journalism website Poynter.org, this is pretty standard practice — although it’s not talked about much:

This type of staging has been going on for decades.

John Harrington, president of the White House News Photographers Association, tells me that the Obama Administration has used this technique before and they are not the first.

“I am aware of it happening in previous administrations. I believe Bush 41 did it too,” Harrington said. “The times where I have known of it happening before is when the President is in the Oval Office and you are working in a very tight space.”

Other photographers who work at the White House told Poynter.org that since the Reagan era (and possibly before) it has been the standard operating procedure that during a live presidential address, still cameras are not allowed to photograph the actual event.

(See also the blog of Jason Reed, a White House photographer for Reuters, who posted a description of the night that Tompkins linked to.)

So why do they do it?

Apparently, it’s partly a concern for space, partly because the teleprompter gets in the way, and partly because camera shutters make too much noise (especially when there are dozens of them, and they’re echoing off White House marble).

But there are ways to silence a camera. Check out this cool foam-lined case for an SLR that practically mutes the shutter sound, although at the price of limiting your ability to change settings on the camera itself. It’s called a Jacobsen Blimp:

Tompkins doesn’t hold back what he thinks about this type of re-staging of a photo. Although the initial photo captions are clear that this was a re-enactment, Poynter checked into 50 newspaper front pages from the next morning. More than half don’t make it clear to readers that they’re not seeing the actual speech:

It is time for this kind of re-enactment to end. The White House should value truth and authenticity. The technology clearly exists to document important moments without interrupting them. Photojournalists and their employers should insist on and press for access to document these historic moments.

Hear, hear.

Conversation starter: What if the tea party protesters were black?

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 25 April 2010 Modern Life

Apr 252010

Here’s a provocative question: What if the tea-party protests was made up of angry black people instead of angry white people?

It’s asked, with examples, in this blog post. In part:

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic?

To be clear, although I don’t agree with any tea partier I’ve seen yet, I support their right to protest until they drop from exhaustion. But have you noticed that the people who scream loudest about needing tolerance are often the people who are least tolerant themselves?

Universal healthcare in the US, the other side of the story

Posted by T. Keith Edmunds on 23 September 2009 Modern Life

Sep 232009

I had trouble understanding the vehement opposition to Obama’s health plan for the US. All the counterarguments seemed to be based on misunderstandings, falsehoods and outright lies.

Now, thanks to this video, I understand.

Thanks, Will Ferrell. You are a wise man.

Obama calls Kayne West a “jackass”

Posted by T. Keith Edmunds on 16 September 2009 Modern Life, Music

Sep 162009

I’m behind the times, I’m sure. I love pop culture, but I tend to be behind the cutting edge by anything between a day and ten years (I recently discovered “Freaks and Geeks,” for example). Nonetheless, here’s my post:

President Obama has called Kayne West a “jackass” due to his shenanigans at the MTV Awards show.

His comment came from an off-the-record portion of an interview with CNBC. The swipe was only made known to the world because ‘Nightline’ co-anchor Terry Moran reported it to his Twitter followers: “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential,” he wrote.

I’m sure the Republicans are going to make an issue out of this, but personally I think it’s awesome. Sure, I’m Canadian, but I get to choose if I like a President or not and I like Obama. I like him even more now since he has shown a couple of important characteristics:

1. He knows about popular culture. Yes, presidents need to know about foreign policy and economic models and whatnot, but they also need to know about what people are interested in. This simple throwaway comment means that he is still in touch with the regular folk.

2. He’s not an opinionless political machine. The “jackass” statement proves that he’s still a real person with an understanding of common decency and he’s not afraid of stating it.

When the President of the United States starts calling immature, self-important entertainers jackasses for their idiotic actions, maybe it’s a sign that we are moving back into an era of civilized public behaviour.

Hey. A guy can dream.

More on the new administration’s emerging graphic identity

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 11 March 2009 Modern Life

Mar 112009

I wrote about my like for the new Recovery.gov logo a little while ago, and expressed my admiration for one of the designers who helped come up with it.

Well, now a different one of the group has been interviewed by the New York Times about the logos, and it’s an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how the logo came about — in just four days! I’m fascinated and a little in awe.

Says designer Steve Juras:

The direction — ‘don’t make it look too governmental’ — that we were given certainly stakes out an interesting position.” What’s also interesting about this logo is that its goal is to become obsolete. Just as the W.P.A. was retired when the Depression was over (and World War II began), the ARRA logo is tied to the fate of the economy. “Hopefully, the recovery effort will work so well and so quickly that we’re no longer in recovery but back at full strength and don’t need it,” Juras said. “The sooner it becomes a historical artifact, the better.”

So much has been written about the Obama campaign and its skilfull use of branding. I wonder if there’s a social science thesis in there somewhere about mixed-race children with absent fathers and their search for identity.

My four degrees of separation to Obama

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 4 March 2009 Modern Life

Mar 042009

Whoa — congratulations to Draplin Design, one of my favourite designers! Aaron over there just spent the last few days working with a couple of other designers to come up with the new Recovery.gov logo, as well as the “Tiger” one, above.

That is a seriously awesome commission, and to think I was hemming and hawing about asking him how much to design a logo for this blog!?

By my count, since I bought socks from Aaron himself, that makes me just four degrees of separation from the leader of the free world! Me -> my socks -> Araron Draplin -> the Recovery.gov logo -> Obama!!

One of the other designers on the project was co-creator of the Obama campaign logo, Steve Juras, and he’s done this short film detailing what happened to the logo now that Obama’s not campaigning, he’s the president, and can use the actual presidential seal.

If you don’t get the “sugar water” references, just take a gander at the new Pepsi logos, which I think are awful (looks like they ran the old Pepsi logos through the “pathfinder” tool in Illustrator, but had the settings all wrong).

Obama makes the right (cola) decision

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 3 March 2009 Modern Life

Mar 032009

Choice of a new generation? Pshaw! Coke is IT, mofo! And the Prez knows it. (Photo from Flickr user Great Beyond)

This is the state of Washington journalism these days? Seriously, I thought journalists were moaning about closing their DC bureaus and stuff? From Time magazine:

The Obama Team’s Drink of Choice? Coke, Not Pepsi

Is Pepsi actually the choice of the Obama Administration? My reporting at the White House suggests the answer is a resounding no. Several senior Administration officials are committed cola drinkers, and without fail they spend their days sipping from a can of Diet Coke, a product of Pepsi’s chief competitor, Coca-Cola.

That’s just Part One of the in-depth investigative reporting on display here. From peering into recycling bins, to checking the availability at Andrews Air Force Base, Time reporter Michael Scherer’s perseverance knows no bounds.

That said, I’m a Coke man from way back. Good choice, Mr. President.

This is actually Barack Obama speaking

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 7 February 2009 NSFW

Feb 072009

I believe this to be from his audiobook, and he is speaking “in character” — in real life these quotes were spoken by someone he knows.

(via BB)

Fame ≠ living forever

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 31 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 312009

I made this with obamicon.me. And so can you.

Vanity Fair proposes that Obama may be the most famous living person ever:

The digital revolution has made this feat of fame possible. Not only has it helped the son of an erstwhile Kenyan goatherd to become president, it has allowed a current Kenyan goatherd to follow the former’s journey. And he is not alone. Exponential growth in access to the Internet, satellite television and radio, cell phones, and P.D.A.’s means that breaking news now reaches virtually every corner of the globe. At the same time, population continues to grow; there are now some 6.7 billion men, women, and children on earth, an historic high.

They also note his “melting pot” personal backstory, as making him relevant to a worldwide global audience in a new way. To that, I will add his faculty in using just enough vagueness in his speeches that you can project nearly anything you want into them.

I take issue, though, with VF’s assertion that the only other two people who may come close are Mohammad Ali and Princess Diana. What about Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson? Weren’t they the gigantic brands of the ’90s?

And Princess Diana? Uhm, if you’re going to be considered for the most famous living person, shouldn’t you be, kind of, alive? Otherwise let’s talk Mickey Mouse, Che and Jesus for famousness.

Grooving with the new prez

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 28 January 2009 Modern Life, Music, Vintage/Retro

Jan 282009

Turn down your volume if you click this image at work or in a library. Otherwise, turn it the hell up!

Normally, if one thinks about the President of the United States spinning platters, perhaps one would think of a circus performer, frantically trying to keep plates spinning atop poles, dashing frantically from one to the other, spinning, spinning, spinning. One plate is labeled “Iraq” and another “Afghanistan,” while there are also plates with terms like “Illegal Immigration” and “Economic Crisis” wobbling around over there.

How does he do it?

Maybe, sometimes, he just needs to relax, and spin a different kind of platter. Why, I think the current President of the United States looks like kind of a cool cat, probably the kind of guy who can spin up a turntable and drop the needle ex-fucking-actly on the damn beat.

That’s a prez who would appreciate a top-secret record collection, all pristine vinyl in special President of the United States limited edition (of one) commemorative sleeve, hidden away in the basement of the White House, right?

Good thing such a secret record collection actually exists!

Stored in the basement of the executive mansion is the official White House Record Library: several hundred LPs that include landmark albums in rock (Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed), punk (the Ramones’ Rocket to Russia, the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols), cult classics (Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin) and disco. Not to mention records by Santana, Neil Young, Talking Heads, Isaac Hayes, Elton John, the Cars and Barry Manilow.

No, it was not designed to ensure that the artform of DJing survives a nuclear apocalypse, or even put there to keep the First Family boogying away in the fallout shelter. But it’s still awesome, and it’s the kind of perk that I never really expected the president to have in real life. Maybe in comic books, but real life?

Wait a minute … black president, with a secret record collection hidden in the basement of the White House?

Is that it? Are we living in a comic book?!?!?

Yessssss. (fist pump)

Vatican criticizes lifting of “global gag rule”

Posted by Amy Breen on 26 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 262009

Obama, in the first few days of his presidency, has been busy. He has made a point of changing some of Bush’s more controversial policies. His most recent act making the news is his decision to overturn the “global gag rule” which bans funding for international groups that perform abortions and help in family planning.

This decision has Vatican officials speaking out. From the Times Online:

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that with “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right”, Mr Obama had signed a decree which would “open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life”.

What has me so bothered, is that Fisichella says Obama is “arrogant” in believing he is right. Excuse me, but doesn’t the Vatican think it is right in deciding that abortions should be illegal, and even worse, a sin? Doesn’t this arrogance cost women their lives? Doesn’t this arrogance make women, who already have a difficult decision to make, believe themselves morally condemned for doing what is possibly best for their situation?

Fisichella goes on:

“What is important is to know how to listen, without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death.

I don’t think the Archbishop is aware of how truly ironic this statement is. The Catholic stance on abortion is purely ideological. And by claiming power of the holy kind, power over the immortal souls of women, the Catholic Church has the arrogance to assert that their position is the right one.

Maybe if the Vatican changed it’s stance on contraception, abortion wouldn’t be such a problem.

Obama isn’t saying abortion is right or wrong; instead he is allowing the decision to be the woman’s, and is allowing the family planning organizations to benefit from funding, so they can give women the proper information and resources concerning abortion.

Good for Obama.

I want to believe

Posted by T. Keith Edmunds on 24 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 242009

How’s this for a premise for a movie? An alien race wants to make itself known to the planet Earth. In order to achieve mass exposure, they choose to reveal themselves at a point in history when the greatest number of people on the planet are all simultaneously watch a historical even unfold.

Say, for example, a presidential inauguration.

Fiction? Could be. Fact? Possibly.

The story is that a UFO was captured on camera at President Obama’s inauguration (by CNN no less). Decide for yourself.

The truth is out there.

Parsing a speech

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 23 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 232009

Well, what Michelle is to style mavens, Barack is to grammarians. Who knew that so many of them would come out of the woordwork to dissect his speech?

Oh yeah: I did.

The latest Stanley Fish column (link) continues the trend. Dr. Fish writes that the Obama inauguration speech is better read, over and over, than it was to listen to. And he gets all nerdy about it, too:

If we regard the text as an object rather than as a performance in time, it becomes possible (and rewarding) to do what the pundits are doing: linger over each alliteration, parse each emphasis, tease out each implication.

There is a technical term for this kind of writing – parataxis, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the placing of propositions or clauses one after the other without indicating . . . the relation of co-ordination or subordination between them.”

The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward. One kind of prose is additive – here’s this and now here’s that; the other asks the reader or hearer to hold in suspension the components of an argument that will not fully emerge until the final word.

It’ll be interesting to see how a hyper-literary president responds, when he knows that professors are drooling over the possibilities in his speeches, and dissecting them. And what a refreshing change to not have a lowest-common-denominator attitude from someone in authority. Now I just have to continue to avoid “Paul Blart.”

The most relevant politician

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 21 January 2009 Modern Life

Jan 212009

Posted without with little comment, a side-by-side comparison of the Brandon Sun front pages after Canada re-elects Harper (left) and America gets a new president (right).

Obviously, there are differences in that Obama is a new guy, and Harper was the old guy, just re-elected. There’s also the pomp and circumstance surrounding the inauguration, which Canada just doesn’t have, and the fact that Obama is breaking a racial barrier. All of which makes it newsier than it might otherwise be.

For the record, after the American election in November, the Sun gave Obama slightly more than half the front page (the top half) but didn’t do the full-bleed photo treatment. I’m sure we would have if my boss had thought of it.

It just drives home the point that US government (like US entertainment and US sports) is becoming more and more prevalent and relevant in Canada — threatening to overwhelm our home-grown stuff. Harper’s subsumation to Bush in matters of foreign affairs didn’t exactly help, neither.

Who is the patron saint of politicians?

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 20 January 2009 Modern Life, Vintage/Retro

Jan 202009

(from Twitter user jessehattabaugh, via BB)

It’s been noted elsewhere, but I love that, in Obama’s inaugural speech he didn’t just invoke God, he name-checked Muslims and Hindus — but also atheists. As far as any of the pundits know, this is the first time an inauguration has bothered with atheists — who make up something like 8% of the American population.

Obama said:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth. (link)

(PS. The patron saint of politicians was only named a few years ago, in 2000. It’s Sir Thomas More, who coined the word “utopia,” had several people burned at the stake, and was eventually beheaded for treason — on trumped-up charges. Makes Gitmo look like a picnic, eh? All this and “more” at Wikipedia!)

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