A Picture Has Power – The Situation Room Photo

I follow Pete Souza on Twitter, he’s the official Whitehouse photographer. Today he tweeted a link to this story on CNN’s website by John Blake. He quotes from Cheryl Contee, co-founder of Jack & Jill Politics, you need to bookmark that site right now. I’m just going to share a few pieces of the CNN article that stuck out to me, go read the whole thing. First, let’s look at the photo in question one more time…

From CNN’s John Blake…

(CNN) — By now, the photo is a classic. It’s become the most viewed image on Flickr — a mesmerizing picture that suggests as much as it reveals.

You may know it simply as the “Situation Room Photo,” but you may not be aware of what some say are three subliminal messages that make it so powerful and unusual.

[...]

But look deeper and that photo becomes historic in a more subtle way. It’s a snapshot of how much this nation’s attitudes about race, women and presidential swagger are changing, several scholars and historians say.

[...]

There’s no historical precedent for this image, she says. White Americans now see a black man not just as their president but their “protector in chief,” Contee says.

“That photo is amazing,” she says. “It’s another step toward rehabilitation of the image of black men in American culture. It’s going to forever impact how people see black men in America.”

[...]

For much of U.S. history, the black man has often been portrayed as the threat to America’s safety — the angry man, the thug, the one you cross the street to avoid, says Cheryl Contee, co-founder of Jack & Jill Politics, a blog focused on current affairs from a black perspective.

But in the Situation Room photo, Contee says, the black man is America’s protector.

[...]

“This is one of the rare times that Tea Party supporters have referred to Obama as President Obama,” says Ari Kohen, an associate professor of social justice and political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

[...]

Go back and examine the defining historic photos of American military might in action, and women are absent, historians say.

[...]

Yet you see two powerful women in the Situation Room photograph — Clinton and Audrey Tomason, director for counterterrorism, who is straining to see from the back. Their inclusion shows how far women have come, Ambar says, even though Clinton’s response is ambiguous because she’s covering her mouth in what looks to be alarm.

And there is much more good stuff in John Blake’s article. For those people playing the pundit games they like to play, I keep hearing how this OBL event won’t have any long term impact on the President’s approval ratings or chances in 2012. Anyone who is saying that doesn’t understand the psyche of the American people very well. On Monday, I heard an anecdote that I know happened all across the country. A person on the street said to a reporter, “I didn’t vote for him last time, but I’m definitely voting for him next time. He got Osama bin Laden.” I wrote about this a little in a post the other day, that the effect on the entire country on 9/11 was profound. Something that hit deep inside all of us. For people to say that bringing Osama bin Laden to justice will not have an impact on the electorate is just plain stupid. President Obama showed once again that he is the most qualified person in public life to run this country.

President Barack Obama – A Man Of The People!

As I listened to the families of the victims of 9/11 talk about meeting President Obama and the effect that he had on them, I heard several times that he was genuine, caring and very sincere in his meetings with them. It made me want to pull out some more photos of the President when he was still a candidate for the job. How can anyone look at that warm smile and that genuineness and call him the names they do, or assign the motives they do, or doubt his worthiness to be president. The reason this man was elected president is because for those people who aren’t slanted by their racism or ideological bent, they see that he is extremely intelligent, caring, warm and a person who really does want to help people. I continue to be proud of his great leadership and drive.

Photos by Extreme Liberal

Racism And Politics Are More Powerful Than Patriotism!

Watch out, I’m about to rant. Profanity warning!!!

What – In – The – Fuck is wrong with this fucking country that the racists and right-wing partisans (one in the same) can actually protest the President of the United States going to ground zero after having killed the man responsible for the attacks of 9/11. I think I’ve lost any sliver of respect I had for these assholes who are obviously driven by their fucking racist hatred for our first black president. There can be no other reason.

Remember back to 9/11 when the whole country rallied around our one president, after the most contentious election in modern times. Democrats weren’t partisan, they stood behind President Bush, even if they had to hold their noses. There was no criticism from anyone that got any attention. I’m sure there was some out there, but they didn’t get paraded on the cable news shows to undermine our one and only President. I am so fucking disgusted with this bullshit that just keeps pouring out of the right-wing and the media, who are their enablers, and in many cases are the driving force behind it. Only after the Bush administration decided to use the event to push their stupid ass agenda of owning Iraq for no fucking reason at all, did the left start to ask serious questions, based in fact I have to say, not the lies and innuendo that drives the GOP these days.

I’ve written before about how up until the election of President Barack Obama, national security has always been pretty much a non-partisan affair. It used to be that politicians never criticized our country on foreign soil, it was not done. Not anymore, the extreme hatred for President Obama has obliterated that concept and many others. The wingnuts who are now running the GOP have no shame, no honor and in my opinion are unpatriotic and should be thrown on the stinking waste pile along with their new ideological leader, Donald Trump.

I hope the President gives a speech that shames those motherfuckers back into their rat holes and exposes their unpatriotic, shameless, racist asses for the whole world to see.