Arrivederci, Sforza.
Category: scott sforza, wh producer
The Politico Does Not Permit The Expensing Of Unapproved Hostess Gifts
“The guys from The Politico brought her [my mom, Cindy McCain] flowers, which I still think is the most adorable thing ever, so thank you. I thought it was so cute that they decided to bring my mom flowers, because it’s rare; they are journalists. [laughs]”
That’s my favorite line from Meghan McCain’s video of the Memorial Day weekend BBQ her parents hosted for the DC press corps at their ranch in Sedona. The first time I heard it, I thought Meghan was being a snob about how poor journalists’ manners are.
But after seeing how she’s so kind towards the help–the family’s chef is a “longtime friend” and the caretaker couple at the ranch are “our other really good friend[s]”–I realized she wasn’t being snobby or mean, just the opposite.
The wheels of Washington journalism are greased by a vast supply of hostess gifts, but many news outlets refuse to reimburse reporters who buy their hostess gifts instead of using something from the company’s official hostess gift closet.
Of course, it would have been equally adorable and cute if they had made Cindy something themselves; a loaf of banana bread, perhaps, or a mosaicked flower pot in the colors of the Southwestern desert?
Move Along, Nothing Sforza To See Here
I haven’t been paying too close attention to the imagery of the current presidential campaign, but looked at through a Sforzian lens, the McCain campaign stop is mind-bogglingly bad news. The photographs are from McCain’s daughter Meghan’s campaign blog which, by some meaningless sleight of hand, is considered to not be a part of the campaign.
Though the flags and the banner provide wire service photographers with some generic background shots, a look at their product shows they’re free-ranging around just shooting whatever. Not a signature image in the bunch. “Town hall meeting” apparently means “speech in the round, no podium.” Which meant that McCain is lost in the not-that-big crowd, a tiny white-haired dot in the wide shot above.
McCain Blogette’s backstage photos at a recent campaign stop in a warehouse-like arena in York, PA show some slack roadies and handlers hanging around, which is fine, if a little pathetic. Not exactly a tightly run ship, the Straight Talk Express.
None of which means there aren’t interesting/revealing shots. AFP’s Paul J. Richards picked up a sweet product shot of McCain’s not-famous-enough $520 Ferragamo loafers, for example, but that’s not all [via afp/yahoo]:
That rug doesn’t just say “McCain 2008” on it; it says, “Paid for by John McCain 2008” on it. Unless the FEC requires disclosure be included on all indoor/outdoor furnishings [“I’m John McCain, and I approved this rug.”], I think someone just took a screengrab from a campaign commercial and sent it to the rug printer.
I’m still trying to decide who made this sign, though. It’s “M-C-C-A-I-N” spelled out in tap code, a cipher used by prisoners in solitary confinement. It puts the letters into a 5×5 grid [minus the K]. So M is third row, second column, etc. This sign, in other words, says “JOHN MCCAIN, POW.” I can’t figure out if it was printed by the campaign and handed out, or if this guy just happened to make it himself. [It doesn’t have the two-color printing of the official McCain signs, and the blue is slightly off. But would a random guy put at otherwise meaningless star on the top, and the campaign URL?] Whether it’s supposed to telegraph McCain’s POW bona fides to a knowing audience, or whether it’s meant to imply that McCain’s POW experience somehow qualifies him for the presidency, the relentless playing of the POW card seems beyond the pale.
Opening Ceremonies
Wow, just wow. Paramilitaries forming the five rings and [apparently] performing the haka? Competitive hurdle-sawing? SWAT teams on Segways?? From the photos of Arirang-style military and police parades staged in cities around the country in advance of the Olympics, China is deadly serious about wresting the propaganda gold from Hitler’s Olympic legacy.
Anti-Terrorism Exercises in China [the big picture]
Eli Manning, The Manchurian Sforzian Backdrop
The hand that picks the nose shakes the hand that rules the world. For another seven months. [ap via wonkette]
Wow. “The Selling Of The War” on VPRO
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by producers from Backlight, an investigative documentary TV series on the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO. They were trying to locate and interview Scott Sforza for a program set for the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. [I’d tried and failed to contact Sforza for my Cabinet Magazine article about his work last summer.]
The episode aired the other night, and it’s online now, and well worth the watch, even if you don’t speak Dutch; most of the talking heads–including me–speak English.
It’s amazing on many levels, not the least of which is the sheer impossibility of an in-depth, retrospective investigation called “The Selling Of The War” ever airing on an American news network. VPRO focused in on a couple of very specific elements of stagecraft, manipulation, and deceit from 2003: Colin Powell’s UN speech; the White House-built stage at the CENTCOM media center in Doha, Qatar; and the Coalition press conference where Gen. Tommy Franks announced the invasion, which had a controversial–and damning–Dutch hook.
I did my Sforza fanboi spiel about human wallpaper, and it turns out that among the human wallpapers Franks pulled on stage and introduced as a Coalition partner was a Dutch colonel, Jan Blom [on the far right above]. But the Netherlands were not part of the Coalition. The guy was a NATO public affairs officer, who was grabbed at the last minute to provide balance and camo variety to the backdrop. Naturally, word of the scandal that erupted in Holland after Blom’s appearance has not yet penetrated the American heartland.
The two guys in the middle were Franks’ equals from the US’ actual Coalition partners, Great Britain and Australia, who were only told at the last minute by a White House operative that they would not be participating in the press conference. The guy on the far left was another prop, a Public Affairs guy from Denmark. So the stagecraft managed to simultaneously insult and dissemble. That’s Rumsfeld’s new lean&mean Army!
Perhaps it’s really a minor point, but it’s just one of many that show how deceptive and manipulative the administration was in the crucial period of the run-up and the invasion. Again, try to imagine a US network news show of any kind devoting 30 minutes to pull apart such a lie. [Actually, it’s probably half that time; there was a great deal of time devoted to former Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson’s explanation of how the UN WMD speech came together, something that has been covered in the US.]
So anyway, happy anniversary!
Program page: Tegenlicht: De Verkoop van een Oorlog [vpro.nl]
Watch the episode online via real player [vpro]
Faster, Bulletin Kill Kill!
Alright, does anyone have a screenshot of the victim?
Apparently, the AP erroneously reported at 6:35EST that Bush resigned over, of all things, plagiarism. It’s like getting Capone for tax evasion.
whoa, it’s 2 min, later, and it gets even more dire-sounding: “A kill is mandatory. Make certain the short headline is not published.”
Do these folks know their mic is on?
BULLETIN KILL [ap/nyt]
1600 For Men: Presidential Prestige Bath Products For Men
There’s nothing I can say that isn’t already said by the licensee:
We are pleased to introduce you to 1600 for Men®- Formulated with the finest of ingredients including naturally derived botanicals and skin enriching vitamins. 1600 for Men™ is produced in small batches, packaged and labeled with simple elegance and bears the most significant mark of the free world-The Presidential Seal of the United States.
From fine cologne to moisturizing body wash to fabulous Kits on the Go this line of products was created to please the senses on every level. Our 1600 for Men® signature scent is crisp, cool and masculine created for “The Man” of the house.
Except for the TSA Toiletry Travel Kit, everything in the 1600 for Men collection is a “power” product. And except for the Presidential Power Robe, all the products are “powerfully presented”:
The deal for 1600 for Men was apparently arranged last year by the Secret Service’s licensing agent in California. 15% of retail sales goes to charities and families of Secret Service personnel. 1600 for Men is available online and in The White House Gift Shop at the National Press Club building in Washington DC.
Magic: Teller Like It Is
At a recent conference talk on magic given in Las Vegas, Teller [the quiet one] gave the most amazing definition of magic I wish I’d heard before writing about Scott Sforza for Cabinet Magazine’s magic issue:
[Magic is] the theatrical linking of a cause with an effect that has no basis in physical reality, but that — in our hearts — ought to.”
I wish he’d have piped up sooner.
Sleights of Mind [NYT]
previously: Cabinet 26: “Perspective Correction
Mitt Romney Dodges Questions About Whitney, Dia, Met Expansion
Good to see he’s taking a brave stand against the one museum that isn’t contemplating opening an annex on the west side of Manhattan, though. You stay strong, Mitt. [image and scoop: tmz.com, story and aide’s inane excuse for Romney’s equating his opponents with an international terrorists, via tpm]
Comrades, Join Me In A Relentless Exposure Of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Despicable Tricks!
I only discovered the Chinese government’s published evisceration of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary Chung Kuo – Cina after I thought I’d finished my Cabinet article on Scott Sforza. Jonathan wondered if Susan Sontag’s On Photography might have a relevant idea or two in it, so I broke out the old copy–and found Sontag’s discussion of Antonioni’s “extremely reactionary and despicable”…camera angles [!]. It made for a sweet, surprisingly symmetrical ending to the piece.
Intrigued, I searched around for the full text of the 1974 Renmin Ribao Commentator pamphlet she quoted from, but it wasn’t online. So I ended up buying a copy, and scanning it in. It’s a fascinating read, and it should have been online long ago.
While the North Korean government is known for bombastic turns of phrase, the Chinese under Madame Mao had a really rousing, articulate, no-holds-barred style of denouncing its enemies and whipping up its populace. Not that the internal political motives of the pamphlet are at all unclear; but it’s entertaining. Antonioni’s criminal techniques weren’t limited to camera placement; his cinematography, use of color and light, editing, and sound editing were all reactionary imperalist tools as well. I don’t know if this is where the Dogme folks got it, but the Gang of Four’s condemnation of non-diagetic sound is easily as vicious as anything Lars von Trier could come up with, and twice as funny.
Anyway, the entire text is after the jump. The numbers in brackets are the page number/page breaks. If there are any typos or formatting errors, please let me know. Enjoy, comrades!
Cabinet 26: “Perspective Correction”
Can I just say, I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t know what’s left to accomplish? I mean, how can I top the thrill of getting to write for Cabinet Magazine? I just don’t know.
I’ve had a puppydog crush on Cabinet since Issue 3, where they interviewed John Cliett about the implications of his definitive/exclusive photos of Walter deMaria’s Lightning Field. Then there was the magazine’s plan in 2003 to lease the ten tiny, lost slivers of surveying-mistake-generated land that Gordon Matta-Clark once bought from the New York City government for his unrealized project, Reality Properties: Fake Estates. What began as an offhand bemusement grew into an exhibition at the Queens Museum and a book–and an important contribution to the resurgence of Matta-Clark’s influence on the art world. It can be self-conscious and super-nerdy, but the magazine consistently finds overlooked and convincing perspectives on the culture and art taking shape around us.
Whenever I read it, I was never able to imagine how to write one of those Cabinet essays. What offbeat subject did I have a slightly too obsessive familiarity with that a dozen art history phd’s didn’t already turn into 300-page dissertations? Then guest editor Jonathan Allen and Sina Najafi emailed me out of the blue, asking if I’d like to interview Scott Sforza about stagecraft for the special issue on Magic. Uh, YEAH.
Sforza never came to the phone, though, so instead, I ended up with an attempt to put a bit of political and visual context around the exercise of control of the vantage point. I also threw in some discussion of the impact of the switch from binocular [eyes] to monocular [camera/lens] vision and the construction and interpretation of media images. For good measure, I connected some dots from Sforza to Andrea del Pozzo to the spiritualist photographers of the 19th century to Jan Dibbets to Michelangelo Antonioni. Susan Sontag and Gilles Deleuze provided much of the theoretical seasoning, along with a rather candid Karl Rove, circa early 2001. To top it off, there are the incredible anti-Sforzian photographs of GWB’s visit to Monolia shot by Iwan Baan.
I tell you this now because the article isn’t online, so you should all go re-up your subscriptions pronto so you can read it. I still can’t believe it’s there.
Cabinet 26: Perspective Correction: The beguiling stagecraft of American politics [cabinetmagazine.org]
We Are All Sforzians Now
Blogging software :: printing press
Pillow case :: digitally printed vinyl Sforzian Backdrops elaborately arranged by White House advance team. Wow. [via nyt]
Sforza Caption Contest?
Even though I know that the official White House photographers work inside the bubble, and hence, can often shoot around and through the Sforzian setups that so masterfully entrap their nominally independent wire service colleagues, it always floors me to find a photo like this on the White House’s own website.
This was GWB speaking to the US Conference of Mayors in 2004.
Signs That Sforza Has Left The Building
1. When the backdrop to a GWB speech about Iraq war funding is literally Dick Cheney lurking in the bushes. [via towleroad]