Posted on 09/20/2008 5:22:48 AM PDT by vietvet67
Atlantic Monthly runs an article on John McCain. A photographer, Jill Greenberg, takes pictures of McCain for the piece. She deliberately takes awful photographs, using her skill as a professional to make the senator look as offensive as possible. Charlie Gibson, given the chance to help Americans to get to know the most interesting political figure in decades, uses that opportunity to score cheap political points to demean her instead. These are two perfect examples of the Leftist bias of the media.
But what is it, really, that offends us so much about this bias? There is nothing wrong with having an opinion or incorporating that into coverage of events. We should not apologize for the bias of Christian television stations or Rush Limbaugh. American journalism has historically been biased, but there is a profound difference between the expressed beliefs of opinionated Americans and the creepy bias of the Leftist media. Once, when newspapers were the main source of news in America, many newspapers had partisan names like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette or the Pottsville Republican. That was fine.
What bothers us about bias in the mainstream media is that the Left lies about its bias. It pretends to be an objective collegial body of neutral professionals. It conceals its opinions and pretends instead to be an honest umpire of the facts. It tries to trick us.
That was what was so very wrong about the Jill Greenberg photo sessions with Senator McCain. Ms. Greenberg pretended to be a genuine professional who would have used the camera in the same way for McCain or Obama. Instead, she used her position as an unbiased professional to fool McCain into trusting her. Then she betrayed that trust.
It is when the Leftist media pretends to be accurate, balanced, and objective that we feel outraged. Clinton taught us how politicians look right into the camera and lie, but we saw that in the Leftist media long ago. Pubic opinion polls routinely show that Americans believe that the media is too liberal. These polls show that Republicans and Independents trust the media much less than Democrats. Even Obama supporters believe that the media is out to get Sarah Palin. How, then, can an honest person look at the American people and say with a straight face that the media is not slanted to the Left? An honest person cannot, but this is precisely what Leftists do all the time: They pretend that conservative complaints about the tilt of network news, national newspapers, and weekly magazines are nutty, even when the Left knows that the bias is real.
The Left does not want to argue honestly or to win fights fairly. Leftists believe that the end justifies the means. If that means pretending to be neutral when in fact you have a distinct political agenda, that is fine (as long as you win.) The Left does not believe in honest umpires. Leftists view those umpires of our society as simply players in the grand game of ideological war.
News anchors and reporters are presented to America as objective referees of information. Healthy societies need good umpires. We expect public school teachers, psychologists, heads of nonprofit organizations, professors, and other types of referees to not have a common political agenda. We expect these societal referees to put their biases aside, to forget their party label, and to look at us as individuals. We do not expect them to abuse our trust.
Leftism, however, has politicized every aspect of human existence. The media is just one slice of our life in which ideological partisans pretend to be good umpires. Public education has become a tool for instilling "correct" value systems. The legal profession, led by the American Bar Association and purely political judges, now has policy goals, rather than process goals like justice. We no longer have systems regulated by the integrity of umpires -- reporters, teachers, judges, etc. -- because the Left has consciously striven to turn all umpires into advocates.
This is because the Left is, at its core, utterly totalitarian. It is pure theory divorced from practice and immune to the lessons of experience. It is ideology hostile to all real ideas (if you doubt this, try telling a Leftist that men and women are basically different -- just as an idea.) It is intense religious faith without the transcendent moral constraints of faith in God. A priest, a minister, and a rabbi all have definite opinions about how to live a good life, but all find their methods constrained by divine principles. Judeo-Christian morality does not believe that the end justifies the means. The zealous clergy of Leftism are constrained only by the gullibility of their audience. An NFL referee looks at a play closely to see how what happened on the field fits into the rulebook. The referees of Leftism have a rule book in which the single rule is to advance their ideology. A judge at the state fair looks at cherry pies or show pigs for defined qualities, but an activist judge in an apellate court enthralled with Leftism looks at ideology and desired outcomes.
The corruption of our referees weakens every part of our society. It is much bigger than the Leftist media, although this corruption of honor has given us the Leftist media. Everything now is political, or it soon will be, if the Left has its way. Although we need many victories for Judeo-Christian civilization to survive, perhaps the biggest victory is to bring back people we can trust. Would it bother us so much if ninety percent of the media was Democrat, if those Democrats behaved impartially? Would the Leftist media be a problem if the Left acknowledged that bias?
Leftists contend fairly when they contend openly. Once there were honorable Leftists, but when the ideology of the Left is tried and fails, as it always does, then these honorable people either change their opinions or make arguments which do not persuade -- or they stopped being honorable people trying to convince us that their ideology is good and, instead, they become the Left's crooked umpires.
The bias of the left is no more apparent than the current edition of Time magazine. The cover story screams about how greedy Wall Street screwed the country. What are the odds of finding an expose of the CRA Act, the two FMs, and all the Dems involved?
Jill Greenberg (born July 1967) is a Canadian photographer.
Greenberg’s End Times, a series of photographs featuring toddlers, was the subject of controversy in 2006. The work featured stylized hyper real closeups of children’s faces contorted by various emotional distresses. The pieces were titled to reflect Greenberg’s frustration with both the Bush administration and Christian Fundamentalism in the United States. The method for getting the children to cry (achieved by offering the children candy and suddenly taking it away) spurred allegations of unethical conduct and provoked the submission of numerous complaints to the art gallery that hosted a public showing of Greenberg’s work.
******
When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.
“He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.
Warned that the image is just the kind of thing that will stir up the anti-media vitriol in the conservative blogosphere, Greenberg said, “Good. I want to stir stuff up, but not to the point where I get audited if he becomes president.”
I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.”
She is not just mean she is deranged!
******
Michelle Malkin:
This is the same magazine that pays the salary of that cretin demanding Trig Palin’s birth records.
This is the same magazine that captioned a photo of McCain “McCainloser.jpg” just five months ago.
The Atlantic’s photo editors show their feelings - the McCain Photo above the story has this name:
http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/McCain%20loser.jpg.
Jill Greenberg was tagged The Manipulator in the early ‘90s when she became known for transforming photos into surreal portraits by tweaking colors, cutting and pasting and otherwise distorting images. The work she created at the beginning of her career took advantage of Photoshop before it was a household name and became iconic of the collaged, multi-colored look of the time, forming the groundwork for the hyper-real work that’s now her trademark.
In this video we take a look at Jill’s portrait series of children crying called “End Times,” visit her at her 2006 Clamp Art exhibit “Monkey Portraits” in NYC and see her at work shooting bears in Canada. We also go to Jill’s Los Angeles studio to get a taste of her Photoshop artistry in action.
Continuing the umpire analogy, they now go beyond calling balls strikes, etc. and are changing the rules to, say, give their team more outs per inning. It beggars belief.
Calling balls strikes is a matter of umpire discretion, but changing the rules is an abuse of power.
Dang.
Atlantic Monthly, instead of simply withholding their payment to Greenberg, should have placed it in her hands long enough for her to read it and then snatched it back.
That’s the picture I wanna see..
Ok, Ok.....then offer her a lollipop.
Photographer Jill Greenberg, who is vehemently anti-Republican and expressed glee that the photos would stir up conservative ire, took pictures of McCain for the cover of The Atlantic’s October issue.
During the shoot, she took several other backlit pictures, which she then doctored and posted to her site. In one photo, she added blood oozing from McCain’s shark-toothed mouth and labeled it with the caption “I am a bloodthirsty warmongerer.” In another, a caption over McCain’s head says, “I will have my girl kill Roe v. Wade,” an obvious reference to his running mate Sarah Palin’s anti-abortion positions.
Editor James Bennet said Greenberg behaved improperly and will not be paid for the session. He said the magazine is also considering a lawsuit.
“She has violated the terms of our agreement with her, of our contract with her so we’re taking steps. So we’re looking into what steps we can see to do something about that,” Bennet told FOX News, adding that he is “already drafting a letter of apology” to McCain.
Born in 1967 in Montreal and grew up in a suburb of Detroit. Graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989 with a degree in photography. The daughter of an ophthalmologist and a travel agent, she is married to movie producer Robert Green and has two children, Violet, 4, and Zed, 2.
Robert Green, Greenberg’s husband/spokesperson, tells Radar that he knows nothing about a lawsuit, but adds that his wife has done nothing wrong. “She delivered them the photo that they asked her to deliver. What she does with the rest of the photos is her business,” he said.
Still Greenberg is a tad apologetic. “She feels bad that the Atlantic has been dragged into this. Her beef is not with them. She’s an artist who is expressing herself through the medium she expresses herself through,” Green said. Her beef, obviously, is with McCain and Republicans, many of whom have flooded Greenberg’s studio with e-mails and phone calls, invariably calling her a “cunt” and/or a “bitch,” according to Green. Jeffery Goldberg, who wrote the cover story that Greenberg’s pictures accompany, is decidedly less crude in his name calling, calling her “an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism.”
The reaction from the right is no surprise. “We’ve been through it before with the End Times piece,” Green said, referencing a series of anti-Bush photos Greenberg did in 2004 that feature crying children. “There’s a strong predilection on the right to equate dissent with evil.”
******
Friday, July 07, 2006
Jill Greenberg’s Husband Robert Green is a Bald Faced Liar
“The Green/Greenbergs have tried very hard to discredit me and pressure me. They have tried to pressure me by calling my employer, they have tried to discredit me as an insane person with personal problems who doesn’t even have kids in a national magazine (when in the post criticizing them I state I’m a father of four). And Robert Green has thought it appropriate now to accuse me of harassing and threatening his children when this has *never* happened.”
“It is sad that Mr. Green would try to use his children, drawing unnecessary attention to them, in this whole debate as some kind of a shield from the criticism that he and his wife are justly receiving. But why should that surprise me coming from people like the Green/Greenbergs. Shame on you for bringing your own kids further into this mess that you’ve created.”
“Rather than deal with this criticism directly you instead resort to ad hominem attacks calling me a “gutless f*ckbag” a “wanker” and a “gutless piece of sh*t.” You refer to Boing Boing who suggested that your harassment of me at my work and libel threats might be out of line as “self important Boing Boing.””
Interesting. Thanks..
Posted by Robert Green (Jill’s husband) at 3:24 PM
Monday, September 15, 2008
some facts about jill’s photo shoot of mccain and other miscellany for any and all who want to comment intelligently...
1. jill owns the images of mccain. the atlantic had a (very) short embargo, and only for the purposes of selling said images.
2. jill’s photo is on the cover of the atlantic magazine. i know this. i’m looking at it. she was asked to do a shot. she delivered on time and on budget. as always.
3. amy frickin’ dresser IS NOT JILL’S PHOTOSHOP PERSON!!!!!!!!! she worked for jill YEARS ago, and learned her style from jill. ferfuxsake. the next person who guesses that amy is the “real talent” gets a slapping with some kind of wet noodle.
4. john mccain is a very powerful man who may soon become even more powerful. he can send people to war where they die, he can change tax law, he can press nuclear buttons. jill greenberg is a citizen of this country and can’t do any of that stuff. and while notionally john mccain works for her in that regard, in fact we seem to be slipping ever more towards fascism here where Dear Leader Must Not Be Questioned. taking the side of the powerful against the less powerful is the character trait of the sycophant. (also, LEAVE JOHN MCCAIN ALONE WAAAAAAAHHHHHH)
5. jill has taken a significant chance of hurting her career in order to express her political beliefs. this used to be called courage. on strobist it is called “an opportunity for me to get a job that jill would have done.” if there has ever been a bigger group of whiny opportunist yuppie-wanna-be bitches in history than non-working-photographers, please let me know where to find them. that i might kick them. nice solidarity, guys, but then you all underbid each other on a daily basis. stay classy.
6. i understand that part of being on strobist or such forums requires that you say “of course her lighting/photography/imagery sucks”. i get it. it’s the law. but, um, it makes you look like a bunch of jealous children.
7. the right wing in this country, or at least that portion of it that sends out e-mails en masse, simply cannot spell to save its life. it really is depressing. though oddly those e-mailers seem quite aware of how to spell “cunt” and “bitch”. sexism is pretty much where they start: vitriol and death threats is where they end.
8. if michelle malkin, ann althouse, WND, Little Green Footballs, gerard “aware of all internet traditions” van den leun and strobist’s publisher david hobby all hate you, you are obviously a good person.
9. any of those said right wingers who say “now i will vote for mccain, i was on the fence” are liars. like mccain and palin, lying seems to the main character trait of the far right.
10. if jill loses work because of this, so be it. it’s a chance she’s willing to take because she loves her country (she’s an american citizen, she left canada when she was 2) and doesn’t want to see it slide further into the abyss of neo-con stupidity. i support her in this, in all of this, 100%.
this post is necessarily not about the atlantic and the statements of their publisher, per the advice of counsel.
http://anothergreenworld.blogspot.com/
Posted by Robert Green (Jills’s husband) at 3:50 PM
Monday, September 01, 2008
I know much of what follows may seem hard to believe, but links provided are all genuine.
SARAH PALIN IS NOT QUALIFIED TO LEAD OUR COUNTRY. She consorts with far right fringe groups. She lies about her public life. She lies about her personal life. This combination is far too risky for our country in these uncertain times.
There are dangerous forces at work trying to undermine the sovereignty of the United States. There are groups actively working to break up the United States, fringe groups that make it their mission to infiltrate major parties and break this great country into pieces.
And the Republican candidate for vice president supports these groups. The specific group is the ALASKAN INDEPENDENCE PARTY.
As GOVERNOR OF ALASKA, she stated that she was “proud of the contributions they made” to state politics. Their platform includes the hope that they create an independent Alaska, one that could hold the rest of the US hostage to their oil hegemony.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/the_alaska_independence_party.php
SARAH PALIN, who didn’t even follow the war in Iraq until 2006 - and didn’t even have an OPINION about a cause our SOLDIERS FIGHT AND DIE FOR – is not qualified to lead our country.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/palin-surge-wha.html
SHE LIED about opposing the “Bridge to Nowhere,” and took the pork barrel money anyway.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-08-31-palin-bridge_N.htm?csp=34
SHE LIED about being a tax cutter as mayor of her hometown, as she raised the sales tax often.
http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/511471.html
SHE THINKS NOTHING OF CALLING OTHER WOMEN IN POLITICS “BITCH” and was party to making fun of another women’s breast cancer (LINK CONTAINS THE AUDIO, AND IT IS UGLY)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/31/palin-laughs-as-opponent_n_122776.html
SHE LIED about using her political office to exact revenge on her former brother-in-law.
http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=8933043
Do not succumb to the temptation to think that criticism of Governor Palin is anti-feminist. To choose such a manifestly unprepared and unworthy candidate for the possibility of serving in the highest office in the land shows John McCain understands nothing about women’s rights, or the struggles many of our own mothers went through to overcome every obstacle put in their way. Instead, he insults women with a move born of tokenism and desperation.
http://anothergreenworld.blogspot.com/
Jill Greenberg:
The work depicts how children would feel if they knew the state of the world they’re set to inherit, explained Greenberg, whose own daughter is featured in the show. “Our government is so corrupt, with all the cronyism and corporate lobbyists,” she said. “I just feel that our world is being ruined. And the environment – when I was pregnant, I kept thinking that I’d love to have a tuna fish sandwich, but I couldn’t because we’ve ruined our oceans.”
“What this has unleashed, this inchoate rage that’s prevalent in the Internet atmosphere,” Green said, “has a lot to do with anonymity and power, the ability to express sentiments online that you cannot express to someone’s face.”
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