Comments on: NPF: PRESIDENTIAL MEDIA

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:53:38 +0000

@polak thats not how it works :)

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:03:43 +0000

Ed, thanks for existing! I recently discovered your blog, and I've been reading it regularly ever since. It's good.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:14:37 +0000

Great post. And I especially like that it includes a variation on one of my favorite Simpson lines. After Bush I moves in the neighborhood and spanks Bart:

Homer: He _spanked_ you? _You_? Bart Simpson?
Bart: I begged him to stop, but he said it was for the good of the
nation.
Abe: Big deal! When I was a pup, we got spanked by Presidents till
the cows came home. Grover Cleveland spanked me on two
nonconsecutive occasions.

By: Desargues

Desargues — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:35:06 +0000

Sorry, it should be 'fake grin.'

By: Desargues

Desargues — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:33:51 +0000

I prefer to take a kinder view of these old representations; they may be images, but we can also look at them as mirrors — they tell things about us, too. The Twenties saw Lincoln as more ragged, gaunt, and grim; why do we choose to sex him up? Mired in post-bellum abundance and spoiled by the sexual revolution, we now expect our entire past to look self-satisfied, 'confident,' and sexually successful. We find the thought that life has a tragic side distasteful, and would rather suppress it — even if that requires repicturing the harsher past. To me, a former refugee from behind the Curtain, this looks like the benevolent side of a coin I'm familiar with: Soviet revisionists removing from historical imagery figures they had grown to dislike.

To us, Adams looks ornery. But what did he look like to his contemporaries? We want our leaders to look happy — and we take as ultimate proof the soulless smile ever-present in official pictures of the present. But whom are we kidding? Even the less intelligent among us know that those smiles aren't real, for they can't possibly be so. But why do we expect them in the first place? Could it be because we've been over-exposed to the fake grim of that professional clown Ronnie (not McDonald), and then been forced to bathe in the shine of Slick Willie's oleaginous smile? Life in Adams' times was anything but a ball, and maybe the man was overwhelmed by how hard it was to steer the ship of the state. How could he look anything but 'ornery'? Maybe to his fellow Americans, it would have looked irresponsible to even attempt a smile. Yet we expect it, require it — from people we have no reason to trust when they grin, and who should have nothing to smile about. So who's the odd one here: we mindless demanders of fake, artificial mirth, or our disillusioned ancestors?

By: karen marie

karen marie — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:18:52 +0000

I don't know, Dryden, I think Adams looks like he's wondering who farted.

By: displaced Capitalist

displaced Capitalist — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:37:47 +0000

Whoops missed one:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=186

There may be others; Kate Beaton is a brilliant artist.

By: displaced Capitalist

displaced Capitalist — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:34:19 +0000

Speaking of former presidents, here are some funny comics:

By: J. Dryden

J. Dryden — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:20:38 +0000

Oil paintings, yes, but sometimes they were of the "warts and all" school of portraiture. To wit, my favorite of John Adams in his later years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OlderJohnAdams.jpg

Now *that* is the 'next to the definition' image of "ornery."

Proposed Caption: "Look, kid, the clock's running–I'm 47 billion years old and I don't want this to be the last thing I do–just paint the fucking picture."