Posted on 09/27/2009 3:47:38 PM PDT by machogirl
Photo of Obama and Spain's First Children Causes a Stir September 25, 2009 04:53 PM ET | Paul Bedard, Alex Kingsbury | Permanent Link | Print
By Alex Kingsbury, Washington Whispers
Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was in for a rude shock if he thought the same privacy conventions that shield the children of public figures in his home country would extend to the United States. Zapatero brought his wife and two daughters along on his trip to New York for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, and on Wednesday he and his family posed for a photograph with President Obama at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The photo caused a huge stir in Spain because the public had never before seen an image of its leader's children, ages 13 and 16, who appeared in the photograph sporting slightly gothic attire.
The photo, credited in the Spanish press to White House photog Lawrence Jackson, was posted on the State Department Flickr site, according to sources. Conservative news outlets in Spain prominently featured the photograph of the Socialist leader's family—with the faces slightly pixilated to comply with the country's aforementioned privacy laws concerning minors—in their papers and on their websites. The conservative El Mundo newspaper put the photograph on Page A1. The liberal El Pais, meanwhile, ran a detailed explainer about why it was not publishing the offending image.
After a request by the Spanish government, the White House removed the photograph from the State Department website. But it was too late. Many Spanish in-boxes today were flooded with a series of E-mails with the photograph—obviously altered—depicting the two teens as members of the Addams Family, the band KISS , and J. R. R. Tolkien's troll-like Orcs.
Besides, those poor girls are pathetic enough; and piling hurt onto them via Photoshop would be unchivalrously dishonorable.
It is the parents and the system that created them who should be attacked - not the children.
[I’m must be culturally challenged. I have no idea what Planet Zorch is. Better google.]
I don’t think anyone normal is allowed to know about Fashion Planet Zorch :)
It’s ALL of them whom I envision as Orcs. Not just the “children”.
That was one of the funniest bits ever. Carol Burnett was a comic genius.
That’s it. After becoming prime minister Zapatero instructed the mass media not to take any picture of his daughters. After this photograph was published, his administration pressured Agencia F to avoid distribution of it and told the press that “the pact was broken”.
However, the glorious Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency gave us Internet to break the siege of Socialist Zapatero and the oligarchic mass media at his service. God Bless America!
>>It’s ALL of them whom I envision as Orcs.
Well why stop with Photoshop then?
Dehumanizing the enemy is, after all, the first step in exterminating them en-masse.
Has it ever occured to you they’ve been propped up on display in the WH precisely because you’re expected to hate them like a Pavlovian dog drooling at the sound of the dinner bell?
How’d that work out for Timothy McVeigh?
Waco (Ding Ding) —> Wacko.
Predictable.
That makes me feel better. :)
Rosemary’s babies all grown up
It looks like a gathering of Wiccans-—the orange sack is the head wicca.
This is now on Yahoo buzz.
Of course, they mention Rush and John McCain.
Megan McCain weighs in.
Goth Girls
Unfortunate Spotlight
by Brett Michael Dykes, Y! News Blog
26 min ago
1,743 Votes
Last week Barack and Michelle Obama hosted a reception for visiting foreign dignitaries at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the course of the evening, the president, whose “amazingly consistent” smile created a viral video, and first lady posed for over 130 photographs with their guests, all of which were later posted to the State Department’s Flickr page.
This caused a problem: Included was a shot of the Obamas posing with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his wife Sonsoles Espinosa, and two daughters, Laura, 16, and Alba, 13, who’ve never had photographs of themselves published previously in print or online due to a Spanish law prohibiting the media from doing so. The photo of Zapatero and his family with the Obamas was quickly removed from Flickr at the request of the Spanish government but still lurks online (in the shot seen here their faces are blurred). The flap is adding concerns on the issue of the privacy of world leaders’ children in the digital age.
Writing on The Daily Beast today, Republican Senator John McCain’s daughter Meghan expressed sympathy for the girls, who’ve been labeled as “goth” in the photo. She says she’s also bewildered by the Spanish government’s reaction:
I want to start out by saying I can’t believe there is a country that exists where the media protects children of public figures, let alone the prime minister’s daughters. It is literally hard for me to fathom that there is a place that respects the privacy of underage children of politicians and diplomats. The second part of this that makes me very sad is that these two girls are enduring a sort of baptism by fire with the media scrutiny that surrounds their family portrait with the Obamas. Not only are they not used to being photographed, but their first foray into being photographed and criticized is on a very public scale with the most famous and powerful politicians in the entire world.
In addition to successfully lobbying the State Department to remove the photo, the Spanish government went so far as to have the state-owned Spanish news agency EFE refrain from distributing it.
The plethora of ridicule faced by Prime Minister Zapatero’s children is a reminder of the harsh scrutiny children of world leaders often face over their appearance. Here in the U.S., Chelsea Clinton, who was so closely protected that Time Magazine referred to her as “the Garbo of presidential children,” was dealt a harsh review by conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh during her father’s presidency, in addition to being called “ugly” in an off-color joke told by none other than Meghan McCain’s father at a Republican fundraiser in 1998. The Bush twins Jenna and Barbara were famously ridiculed for - and photographed - partying with friends.
The Spanish government’s policy toward Zapatero’s children contrasts with the tricky relationship between the U.S. media and first daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 8, who have been largely sheltered from the press but certainly haven’t been invisible. Back in June, photographers were allowed to photograph the president walking to get ice cream with his girls on Father’s Day weekend, not long after the White House requested that the press not publish a photo of Obama waving to Sasha as she stood on one of the White House balconies. Meanwhile, the official White House Flickr page contains numerous “behind the scenes” pictures of the Obama children.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently said that the administration would permit press access to the Obama children when they are part of “official events with the president and first lady,” but added that “there should be a wide berth of privacy extended to the family” when they’re alone or doing something as a family. He added that the White House’s Flickr photos of the children exist to control the paparazzi market for pictures of the Obama children, the youngest to occupy the White House since John and Caroline Kennedy, who were also fiercely guarded.
Sheltering their children is forcing modern world leaders to deal with challenges most of their predecessors never had to contend with: digital technology and the Internet. The influx of digital cameras and cell phones and the rise of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. make it easy for anyone to take a photograph and distribute it widely in a matter of minutes, making it virtually impossible for even the highest levels of government to keep the genie in the bottle.
I saw that movie as a kid. Scared the bejeebies out of me.
Well why don’t you go bother someone else? I think you’re the predictable one. Predictably loony.
Why doesn’t he come out and say that he’s proud of his girls and they are beautiful and he supports them and leave it at that?
I must be dumb, I’m trying to picture that?
Good analogy.
I wonder if when they grow up they look back on this horror and wonder what in the world were we thinking? I hope so.
They could have used some more color. A nice colorful belt and different shoes would have made this look less “frumpy”.
That picture of Liza, hubby, Michael and Liz is creepy. Hubby looks really creepy.
Yikes! The Misses Zapatero make our First Lady look slender and beautifully dressed by comparison — might as well drop a back cloth over each of their heads and complete the burka look. Mrs. Zapatero helps too, sporting a short black burlap sack to show off her bowed legs and conceal any trace of a healthy, attractive female shape that might possibly be lurking underneath. And it’s just flat-out rude to show up for a meeting with a head of state, towing along your sullen teenage daughter who’s wearing combat boots.
Certainly not flattering. Spanish actress Penelope Cruz always looks elegant.
Geez, was it a full moon? scary bunch.
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