Photounrealism

Photoshop: Memories - the way we want them

While we all understand that photographs aren't always what they purport to be, one wonders what the future of photography will be, once we get to a point where nearly flawless alterations are widespread enough where it's difficult to say that any given photograph actually chronicles a real event. People have already taken to discounting photographs that challenge their beliefs, citing the ease of forgery as a reason.

I suspect we'll get to the point where you'll see T-shirts saying: "Reality is for people who haven't mastered Photoshop."

Bigger is Better

Okay, so let me get this straight. A meat packer, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of their animals for Mad Cow Disease. Large meat packers oppose such testing, because they a) don't want to suffer the expense of doing such testing themselves, and b) don't want Creekstone Farms to be able to advertise that they do, presumably because they fear that people would be more likely to buy tested beef, thus giving Creekstone a competitive advantage, even with the presumably higher price.

Enter the United States Department of Agriculture, which currently tests about 1 in every 100 animals for the disease, and has taken some flack because they've managed to miss some fairly obvious cases of "downer" cows being sent to slaughter. The Department's position is that they may dictate the number of cows tested, under their power to regulate disease treatment in the food supply - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, stating, in effect, that testing a DEAD animal for a disease for which there is NO cure can be considered part of "treatment."

It doesn't take much for the appearance of impropriety to be visible. Large meat packers don't want smaller operations to have a competitive advantage in being able to advertise that they've tested and certified that every single animal they sell is free of Mad Cow. That's fine - it's what you would expect out of business. But the USDA has NO business taking sides here - especially when there are still foreign markets leery of accepting US beef imports, for fear of the disease. The Bush Administration is showing a distinct bias towards large businesses over smaller ones, now even to the point of preventing smaller operations from capitalizing on their smaller size to increase their profitability. Especially when a case can be made that it is being done at the direct expense of the public being able to make more informed decisions concerning their health. It's likely true that if universal testing for Mad Cow became the norm, the higher prices would drive down beef consumption. But that's a choice for the market to make on its own, not for the USDA to prevent through bad-faith regulations.

This is unacceptable.

Says Who?

"Hezbollah's presence in Venezuela draws concern"

Only... there is nothing in the article (which seems to be a much shorter variation of one that appears in the LA Times) that actually points to any Hezbollah boots on the ground in Venezuela. The fact that the Chavez government has adopted an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" stance towards Iran, does not, in and of itself, establish that Venezuela is willing to allow "The Party of God" to set up shop there.

"Agents of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah have allegedly set up a special force to attempt to kidnap Jewish businesspeople in Latin America and spirit them to Lebanon, according to the Western anti-terrorism official." Wow - if this doesn't get the anonymouse award of the century, I don't know what does. We lack not only a name, agency and position, but even the country of origin or any real reason why the source needs to remain anonymous. Come now, I could make the case that some flunky who figures out what to do with the checks from DHS in Wyoming counts as "a Western anti-terrorism official." And we also don't know who's making the referenced allegations - the anonymous source could have pulled them out of his ass, for all that we really know. You couldn't get information this poorly sourced onto Wikipedia - they'd flag you for using "weasel words" in a heartbeat. (Although I admit to finding the parallel to Israel's kidnapping of wanted members of the Third Reich, and smuggling them to Israel to be an interesting one.)

Dean Starkman of the Columbia Journalism Review, in one of Jack Shafer's Press Box articles, says that journalists should not allow "interested parties to blowdart enemies from the blinds in news pages" through anonymous sourcing. That seems to be exactly what is happening here. Someone's drumming up fear around Venezuela by insinuating that their relationship with Iran is an open door for Hezbollah to walk through and start terror attacks - essentially claiming that Hugo Chavez' government is on the path to being a State Sponsor of Terrorism. All without a shred of real evidence. As Shafer later points out "If a source has an interest in the way a story is written, he'll do his best to play the reporter. This is true whether the source is on the record or cited anonymously. And the more anonymity he's given, the greater his opportunity to play the reporter and hence the reader."

Shafer has created a web form to report over-reliance on anonymous sources, so I called this out to him. I suspect a lot of people flagged this particular article, so we'll see if he says anything about it in his next Press Box column about Anonymice. I hope he does. Because someone's really trying to play us here.

The Cause

The "Disgruntled Hillary Clinton Supporter" is back in the news, this time in the context that Senator Clinton is having difficulty getting her die-hard supporters to throw their support behind Senator Obama's campaign. There is an interesting point that seems to be missing from this revived coverage: Many of these people appear NOT to actually be supporters of Senator Clinton - they are supporters of a CAUSE, for which Senator Clinton was not the leader, but a figurehead. Hence, the idea that die-hard Clintonistas "don't find [Senator Clinton] as persuasive as they once did because they think she's supporting Obama only to keep her political future alive." In other words, Senator Clinton was useful to this segment of her "supporters" only as long as she was on board with the Cause. Now, that she has seemingly abandoned it, in the name of political pragmatism, she has become merely a high-visibility apostate.

This, more than anything else, seems to be at the root of the problem. I suspect that there is a segment like this in the die-hard core constituency of any popular politician. There are likely some Mitt Romney "supporters" that have decided that Senator McCain isn't their man, either, and regard Romney as somehow treacherous for suggesting that he should be. The unique aspect of the Hillary Clinton campaign is the remarkable percentage of her overall voter base who support what they decided she stood for, rather than the candidate herself, or the party that she belongs to, and are now willing to ignore both in the name of being true to the Cause.

Games Are For Guys

For those of us that may have forgotten, MSNBC kindly reminds us that video games aimed at a target demographic of teenage boys are remarkably sexist, and pretty much universally depict women as skimpily clad sex objects to be ogled. Because, maybe, you might pick up a game like Rumble Roses XX thinking that it's going to be a tasteful and well thought-out study of women's professional wrestling.

Sarcasm aside, the article does have one flaw - all of the games portrayed are Japanese. And, as anyone who has ever read Play Magazine can tell you, the Land of the Rising Sun has nothing close to a monopoly on digital sexism.