Editorial & Opinion
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Jill Greenberg: Taking Candidates From A McBaby
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 27, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Saturday, September 27th, 2008Some people ar just plain McMean…
Photographer Jill Greenberg caught a lot of flak recently from Atlantic magazine for getting hired to take a cover photo of John McCain, and then intentionally lighting him to look like the pasty, jowly monster that he is. At first I found this amusing, and then I ran across these photos she took of children crying. Now I think she needs a new shrink. Her intent, she claims, was to depict what she says reminded her of the “helplessness and anger I feel about our current political and social situation.” Which she strangely thinks will be remedied somehow by literally taking candy from children and photographing them? Hey Jill! Maybe you could vote or something! The McCain photos were recently pulled from her site, but you can still find some of them here. And then you’ll understand why he pays that $5,000 makeup person everyone’s giving him such a hard time about.
Explanatory Comics For Commie Economics
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 25, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Thursday, September 25th, 2008If you can’t trust a stick figure, who CAN you trust?
It’s a little frustrating that at a time when America could use some explanations about what’s going on with this historic financial crisis, the people best positioned to help are most likely to lie. However, in a strange fit of honesty, a Treasury spokeswoman quoted in this Forbes.com piece said “It’s not based on any particular data point” – referring to the $700 Billion figure being tossed around – adding: “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” Nice. This Wall Street Journal piece points out that if you want some answers, just ask John McCain. Reminding us that aside from the fact that many of his friends on the Straight Talk Express are the same guys that caused this mess, he has the experience of that Keating Five stuff under his belt. The only really sane and comprehensible explanations I’ve seen though, have come from pretty strange sources. First of all, there’s a sort of stick-figure PowerPoint here. Kind of long, but thorough, and easy to follow. This next one is is likely to have porn ads on the page and link to other rather risque stuff, so click at your own risk. It’s a REALLY long, but is a funny and simplistic explanation posted as a forum thread on Imagechan.com (again, probably NSFW).
Shopping Can Be Torture
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 24, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008Abu Ghraib: The Bush Administration Gift That Keeps On Giving
Doing some early Christmas shopping? Looking for that perfect gift, that special something that really sends a message? Try shopping at America the Gift Shop. They stock those hard to find items like the Abu Ghraib Coffee Table, pictured left; a great centerpiece for reviving “Doing The Lynndie” at holiday parties. Actually, this is an art project by photographer Phillip Toledano, in which he asks “If American foreign policy had a gift shop, what would it sell?” If you find the “human being as coffee table” concept familiar, it’s probably because this idea was already kind of stolen from pop artist Allen Jones in the sixties, when Stanley Kubrick wanted to use the concept for sets in A Clockwork Orange
Propaganda You Could Believe In
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 19, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Friday, September 19th, 2008Propaganda? You better believe it!
In a pretty hip move, the American Legion has put a bunch of scans of vintage posters on line. I think that poster at left should be put back into production to get people to carpool a little. Just replace “Hitler” with “Halliburton”, and it’s good to go. There are literally hundreds of them, including gems like Housewives! SAVE WASTE FATS FOR EXPLOSIVES! Take them to your meat dealer. Or this one, showing three fists holding wrenches and guns to the sky and thanking God for being on our side. Grow Your Own BE SURE! has obvious Photoshop potential , as does this one, which is one finger away from being hilarious. On that note, save yourself the trouble; FreakingNews.com has a bunch here, and there was already a worth1000 contest. A little unrelated, but amusing: Marlboros for Mommies.
Why We Link
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 17, 2008 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008The made-for-TV version of Clemens Kogler’s video “Le Grand Content”
A cool video was making the rounds yesterday with the title “Why We Drink”. It’s a sort of hip, 2.0, 3-D video absurdist Powerpoint explanation of life. Made me smile, anyway. The original video is at left, or on the creator Clemens Kogler’s site with the title “Le Grand Content”. I love his summary, in which he explains that it “…examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand ‘association-chain-massacre’, which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters…” As a courtesy to our American viewers who can’t handle the ponderous, European art-house, four-minute director’s cut, there’s a shorter (two minute) version here, re-titled “Why We Drink”.