DEAN THE DORK
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James Joyner | Saturday, January 17, 2004 |
It occured to me earlier today that virtually every still photograph of Howard Dean I see makes him look like a complete idiot. A near-random sample of what I found at WaPo, NYT, and YahooNews on pages active within the last ten minutes appears in the extended entry.
But this is true of probably 3/4 of the photographs I see of political figures, period. It must be a point of pride for “photojournalists” to catch people with odd expressions on their faces and their editors apparently think these make for representative news photos.
Matt Drudge has turned highlighting the most ridiculous of these on his web site into a near art form. But look at the collection at Yahoo! News – Politics. An amazing percentage of these have the candidates in rather embarrasing poses.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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That's nuthin'.
Check this out.
Canadian MP's Tony Valeri
http://www.playground.net/~danad/valeri2.jpg
And Tony Clement
http://images.theglobeandmail.com/archives/RTGAM/images/20040115/w2clement0115/0115clem2.jpg
Actually, this has the makings of a good contest.
Thank GAWD the press ain't followin' me around snappin' pictures of me doing stupid things all day. It wouldn't be hard to do.
Actually, while I will agree partially with your premise, I don't find anything particulary horrendous about any within this particular set of pictures. The middle picture is actually pretty good. (You are right that Drudge does make posting embarrassing pictures and art form.)
Dean suffers from the same problem I do -- short, stubby and no neck. This makes any side pictures look horrendous.
The general problem with pictures is that they do take a snapshot of what we are doing and at any given time we are in the process of an odd pose -- we are creatures of motion, not "still lifes" (except for bloggers).
I think Dean is just one of those unfortunate non-photogenic people. Kind of a bummer for a presidential candidate.
It must be a point of pride for "photojournalists" to catch people with odd expressions on their faces and their editors apparently think these make for representative news photos.
Not quite, but close. When Quayle was running for Pres I took over 200 frames of him for a story. The editor picked the absolute worst one.
The idea (for the photog) is to get him doing an action not looking like Al Gore. (sorry Gore always looks like that) The editor wants something that will draw eyes.
The fact you are blogging about it tells me the editors are accomplishing that mission.
Paul
(admittedly that is from a pj's chair, we blame editors for all the world's problems.)
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