(First a Note: This is not the picture in question. It’s better)
That’s the Yahoo! News headline. Hillary Edited Out of Iconic Photo. Though I’m not particularly concerned about that. I’m more interested in the media narrative about a staged photo. The word iconic keeps popping up as an adjective to describe this "piece of…history."
Well, Iconic is defined by dictionary dot com as…
-Adj,
1. relating to, resembling, or having the character of an icon.
2. (of memorial sculptures, esp those depicting athletes of ancient Greece) having a fixed conventional style.
OK. Not much to work with there. How about Icon then?
| — n | |
| 1. | Also: ikon a representation of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, esp one painted in oil on a wooden panel, depicted in a traditional Byzantine style and venerated in the Eastern Church |
| 2. | an image, picture, representation, etc |
| 3. | a person or thing regarded as a symbol of a belief, nation, community, or cultural movement |
| 4. | a person regarded as a sex symbol or as a symbol of the latest fashion trends |
| 5. | a pictorial representation of a facility available on a computer system, that enables the facility to be activated by means of a screen cursor rather than by a textual instruction |
Which of these five do you think the media is shooting for?
Given the direction of public education, I think we will have to amalgamate these into a common perception. Something that fits the modern, western, collective unconscious, or in this case the media narrative about the current administration. Iconic implies a historical moment of great importance destined to define our nation and it’s leaders (so -depicted) for generations to come. Think- Sputnik moment!
Well lets work with that.
Barack "I’ll cut the deficit in half after I triple it" Obama is wearing a golf shirt, questioning any serious discussion about whether he even knew the assault was that day. Hillary "sniper fire" Clinton looks shocked or awed–though we now understand that this had something to do with "allergies," after it was reported that they are not looking at the assault and capture of bin Laden. Everyone else is kind of blank faced, although Biden’s eyes are open which is "iconic." Since we know for a fact that they are not–as reported–watching the assault/capture/assassination the so-called iconography seeks to enshrine, what exactly does this left Wing ‘Last Supper’ really tell us?
It is another symbol of the media’s lack of objectivity, a large insect feeding on the rotten corpse of the main-stream free-press.
As a staged piece of populist propaganda, proven to be yet another Obama/Progressive Potemkin village, it validates the patent distrust we all feel towards them and the dishonesty of this political party, its leadership, it’s leader, and its obsessive desire to mislead the people in pursuit of photo-ops to build up a tragically failed and economically destructive presidency doomed to end in 2012.
As an image or representation, it is the front line in the cascade of contradictory mayhem that followed, showing us that this is leadership by "committees" who are as often at odds without any clear direction; a beast with no head whose titular leader is not the president of the free world but the spokes-model for Socialism Incorporated with a trillion dollar credit line and a book full of blank checks.
So yeah, this image is iconic. It represents the vacuous lies of Obama’s entire life to date and the beginning of the end of the Obama Presidency. And maybe the Hasidic newspaper that just apologized for editing her out–the source of the original headline–actually did Hillary a favor.
