There's been a lot of iconographic commentary on the image above. The comparison that leaped to my mind was the image below:
It's from a rather droll piece in New York Magazine -- yes, New York Magazine -- about how young guys are watching too much porn. That's what the two lads above were said to be doing at the time the photo was taken, and I believe it.
The difference, of course, is that almost certainly nobody died to evoke their rapt expressions.
Much has been made of the hand over Hillary's mouth in the top photo. Apart from the anonymous young staffchick in the background, peering between two male shoulders clad in what appears to be Brooks Brothers pima, Hillary is the only girl in the room.
What expression does Hillary's hand conceal? Revulsion, of which she is ashamed? Excitement, of which she is ashamed? Both, perhaps?
She is, after all, a woman of my generation. They tend to have a problem with porn, in my experience. The staffchick is younger and perhaps that's why she's so unfazed.
She knows the money shot is imminent. She's seen it before. She's following the story but not altogether caught up in it.
But the boys, old and young -- notice that none of them has his hands in sight?
Comments (26)
Funny Games.
Posted by sk | May 4, 2011 11:42 PM
Posted on May 4, 2011 23:42
Turns out the "staffchick" is in fact a very grand personage -- Audrey Tomason, Director For Counterterrorism. Director of what, one asks? Funny how this title has become untethered from its roots as a verbal noun. "Director" doesn't involve directing anything in particular -- it's a rank, like "Lieutenant". Nobody asks whose lieu a lieutenant is tenanting.
Speaking of ranks, you know you're President when the sweaty, suety, overdressed stooge running the projector is an Air Force general. Probably the high point of this poor man's military career.
Posted by MJS | May 5, 2011 12:08 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 00:08
The stooge looks like a middle-aged Woody Mattchuck.
Posted by Al Schumann | May 5, 2011 12:21 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 00:21
Al:
How about shopping Hill's hand out and a medium sized pink bubble in.
Posted by Boink | May 5, 2011 12:26 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 00:26
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_20/b4228007205924.htm
Is there anything missing from this wonderful characterization of the strength of the
USAFantasyland? Ha, ha, ha. Gotta love it.Posted by Boink | May 5, 2011 3:12 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 03:12
From Germany's Spy, Titanic magazine:
http://www.titanic-magazin.de/uploads/pics/Perverses-Weisses-Haus_01.jpg
Posted by davidly | May 5, 2011 4:58 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 04:58
Boink, to the degree that I could stomach the comments, they were even better -- straight out of the "the US had and still has its flaws, but the genius of the country is that these flaws are gradually corrected, unlike anywhere else in the world!" playbook that liberal-centrist patriots so adore.
Posted by gluelicker | May 5, 2011 8:54 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 08:54
Maddow was gushing over that photo (the top one, that is) the other night. Apparently we were supposed to be impressed by it, but I'm not sure why. She even showed close-ups of several of the faces, including the glorious prez's. I guess we were supposed to impressed by the look of a serious man taking his job very seriously. Or something.
Posted by Joe | May 5, 2011 11:47 AM
Posted on May 5, 2011 11:47
She was coughing.
Posted by razortag | May 5, 2011 12:27 PM
Posted on May 5, 2011 12:27
I guess we were supposed to impressed by the look of a serious man taking his job very seriously.
"The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges."
Posted by Carl | May 5, 2011 12:30 PM
Posted on May 5, 2011 12:30
At least those files are concealing Hillary's throbbing boner for power. Be grateful for small mercies.
Posted by flyingrodent | May 5, 2011 5:51 PM
Posted on May 5, 2011 17:51
I can't believe the US media is going so frickin' ga-ga over this foto... no, actually, I take it back -- I totally believe it, as they're always so goddamn' desperate for something to make a big deal about. I'm not surprised that Rachel Maddow's nipples are exploding with delight at ths sight of this foto -- appalling, yes, but not surprising.
I think it's hilarious that the media are going on and on about how "iconic" this image is -- and it's just a bunch of goddamn' people in a room with laptops watching a goddamn' TV screen. Next time a bunch of my buds and I get together to watch a ballgame, I'll stand behind the TV and get a group shot of them all engrossed in the game, and that'll be "iconic", too.
For those of you outside DC, the Washington Post "Style" section splatterd this foto all over the top of the front page with all this accompanying commentary from military "experts", film critics, etc. giving their own opinions on what makes this foto "iconic". When I first got a look at the "Style" section this morning, I laughed so hard that I forgot to be as disgusted as I should've been.
Advice to the Post in the future...
Foto of Apollo 11 mission controllers standing at their consoles watching the big screen in the front of the room in rapt awe as Armstrong takes his first steps on another world: iconic.
Foto of a bunch of spoiled, rich, nuclear-armed sociopathic fops sitting around a conference table in an antiseptic room watching an extrajudicial assassination via a grunt's helmet-cam: NOT iconic.
Posted by Mike Flugennock | May 5, 2011 6:00 PM
Posted on May 5, 2011 18:00
The photo is either of another event, or bogus. The government has also claimed there was a "blackout" during the actual raid, which is supposedly why there is no video of the attack, like during the Jessica Lynch Show.
So at most, the folks in the room here are watching a first-person view of a helicopter flight, not a combat operation in progress. Hardly a cause for such tension and baited breath.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8493391/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Blackout-during-raid-on-bin-Laden-compound.html
As always, the official narrative is simple and all too convenient, until you look beneath the surface. But don't look too hard, lest you be denounced as a conspiracy kook by the media-credulous "Left."
Posted by Sean | May 5, 2011 8:36 PM
Posted on May 5, 2011 20:36
I think it's hilarious that the media are going on and on about how "iconic" this image is -- and it's just a bunch of goddamn' people in a room with laptops watching a goddamn' TV screen.
If icons are supposed to crystallize the totemic preoccupations and themes of an era, what could be more iconic? More worrisome is that this pic can properly be considered iconic...
Posted by gluelicker | May 6, 2011 12:42 AM
Posted on May 6, 2011 00:42
"chick" and "staffchick" are offensive terms - women are actually human beings.
And yeah, women of my age have a problem with porn and sexual exploitation of women in general as well as issues with abuses in the sex industry, sexual slavery and victimization of poor women worldwide.
Nothing is healthy in excess and apparently excessive addiction to porn makes these "boys" unable to actually perform well or enjoy sex with a real live girl.
I'm done with this site.
Posted by Allison | May 6, 2011 11:13 AM
Posted on May 6, 2011 11:13
"human being" is an offensive term.
These people are not human beings. They are zombies, former humans who died and became possessed by the desire to eat other humans, figuratively and literally.
I'm done with idiots like "Allison"!!
Posted by Karl | May 6, 2011 11:30 AM
Posted on May 6, 2011 11:30
If the "staffchick" really is Audrey Tomason, and Audrey Tomason really has the resume attributed to her on the Web -- Google is your friend here -- then no term is too abusive for her.
Posted by MJS | May 6, 2011 12:04 PM
Posted on May 6, 2011 12:04
the moral frenzy father has churned up
is reaching climactic expostulatory proportions
"human being is an offensive term."
"These people are not human beings.
They are zombies, former humans who died and became possessed by the desire to eat other humans, figuratively and literally."
"...no term is too abusive for her."
Posted by op | May 6, 2011 7:37 PM
Posted on May 6, 2011 19:37
Was it good for you, too?
Posted by MJS | May 6, 2011 9:16 PM
Posted on May 6, 2011 21:16
Kindly Paine,
The context: as used by Allison it's an offensive term, since "Allison" misplaces the label on those ghoulish cannibals who only are human in a past sense: presumably, at the moment they left their respective maternal birth canals, and for not long thereafter.
Evidence they are human and humane, present day?
There is none, save for "Allison" and her imaginings.
Neat trick though, how she turned the whole discussion into woman-hatred rather than ghoul-despise or zombie-dispatch. Bet she's a "feminist" ...with all that term implies.
"Look at me! I have two X chromosomes and YOU OPPRESS ME YOU STUPID PENIS-BEARER!"
Posted by Karl | May 7, 2011 10:52 AM
Posted on May 7, 2011 10:52
The diction policing seems so 70s now. Hard to believe it's still being practiced.
Posted by MJS | May 7, 2011 5:47 PM
Posted on May 7, 2011 17:47
Always eager to try to picture the contributers here, I request that Allison, should she return to pick up her responses, expand on the phrase "women of my age". I have no idea what that age might be and the info would help contextualize the complaint.
I was born in 1945 but am youthful, possibly silly, for my all my years.
Posted by Boink | May 8, 2011 3:22 AM
Posted on May 8, 2011 03:22
for
myall my years.Posted by Boink | May 8, 2011 3:25 AM
Posted on May 8, 2011 03:25
1945 !!
boink shit you're older then me
you magic fart you
-----------------
god this is hard for me to say
but maybe we could notice the number of lady folk we offend here
me undoubtedly the worse offender
father S
can confirm i've always antagonized
"the skoits"
and played quite the pig on occasion
there is however remorse
Posted by Anonymous | May 8, 2011 8:51 AM
Posted on May 8, 2011 08:51
Allison is "done with this site" because of the us of the word "staffchick"?
I think she must have been reading since the positive Andrea Dworkin ping-pong volleys a few weeks ago.
Sorry, Allison, that this site has yet to undertake a be-sensitive-to-young-female-Obamabots intern internal purge.
As for the porn thing, despite initially condemning it wholesale, you did mention something about excess- how many times would qualify, in your woman of a certain age opinion? I'm afraid I might have passed your threshold a while back(fifth grade?), but I do still enjoy mightily sex with a real live woman, unlike Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader, more like Dennis K.
Posted by mjosef | May 8, 2011 2:38 PM
Posted on May 8, 2011 14:38
Audrey aka Frances is labeled 'Director for Counterterrorism for the National Security Council.' [Not to be confused with Michael Leiter, the Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (wiki, though the 'Frances' mention derives from elsewhere]
experience level? any? but then that fits MJS' orig comment - from my angle she is just one more bureaucrat. higher up those ladders junkier the info provided.
roomful of 'people' still caught up in national security state beliefs and
expected spectacle of the spectacle
of an assassination...quite sick
[better that they had been there;
better still that each...]
Posted by juan | May 10, 2011 3:47 AM
Posted on May 10, 2011 03:47