The media tells secret stories, according to blogger Josh Marshall.
"When the story is bad for the president, you find a picture of him caught off guard, embarrassed, looking stupid," he writes. The picture may or may not correspond to the actual news, but editors don't care. "You just need one that shows the guy expressing the emotion the editors think he must be experiencing because of the story they're publishing."
It's not a right-wing/left-wing thing. In the Clinton days "they had a stock 'sad' Clinton picture," Marshall says, "with a sort of 'man, am I bummin' look on his face." Is the media now branding Bush with a "dazed and confused" storyline?
Dismissive Bush
(Associated Press)
"Yes, yes, I have the report, right here in front of me, as you can plainly see. No, I haven't opened it yet. Thought I'd take a look at the back cover first. Now shoo."
That's the message in this AP photograph — but there's something else. Bush has always had a breezy Texas disdain for the press corps he considers negative and biased — Washington's nattering naybobs of buzzkill. Here he's looking up awkwardly, tired eyes averted, gesturing them away, but weakly. It's like he's going through the motions of disdain without really feeling it.
The Democrats' takeover of Congress was called an electoral rejection of Bush's policy in Iraq, and news editors may see that as their cue. ("Now what, Mr. President" asked a (Newsweek) headline.)
The release of the critical Iraq Study Group report fits that emerging narrative perfectly. ("Panel: Bush's Iraq policies have failed," read one AP headline paired with this photo.) Maybe the picture was chosen for reinforcing that message with subtle visual suggestions of "chastised hesitation."
Or maybe that's Bush's actual reaction, and the news editors are simply providing coverage of the moment — and all its dimensions. Minutes after I spotted this picture in an AP News story, Yahoo had swapped in a different picture. "Iraqis react outside the Yarmouk hospital following an attack in Baghdad."
Worried Bush
(CNN)
This picture — on the CNN site's front page — shows Bush deep in thought, his forehead lined, his usual confidence momentarily stunned.
Article comments
1 - Steve
You forgot monkey face bush.
2 - dazey mai
Attempting to read Bushes face is like trying to read the face of Alfred E. Neuman. Jeez!
3 - nancy
Almost every time I see a photo of him, he's got his mouth open. I've seldom seen one of him with it closed; and when I have, he's smirking. Even I have concluded 99.99% of editors must be carefully selecting which images to use; surely no human being can be so... so... idiotic so much of the time, can they?
Oh, right. Sorry - we ARE talking about Dubya, aren't we? I withdraw the last comment above.
4 - Zedd
I'm confused. Do we not have televisions, you know those moving pictures that we get in our living rooms.
Bush does more live conferences than any President. I think that "stupid Bush", "confused Bush", "smirky Bush", "dazed Bush", "intoxicated Bush", "arrogant Bush" "cringesome Bush", and all of the other Bushes are not hard to see on your own without the media consipiracy (???).
Actually I am often shocked that they can come up with those presidential looking pictures because on the news conferences that I have seen, he pretty much looks lost and confused, arrogantly and high/drunk... Maybe its a right winged consipiracy to make him look compitant.
5 - Zedd
Maybe it my poor resolution but on my screen, all of the above pictures pretty much look the same... lost and confused/could be drunk.
Is it me?
6 - Elvira Black
Great stuff, Lou, on the semiotics of Bush-face.
I think you captured all his possible expressions--five in all. His economy of expresion reminds me of such acting greats as Lee Majors (should have had an acting school where you learn how to convey all possible emotions from A to B), or Ah..nold, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, and so on in their heydays.
These guys were even more economical in their expressive range, forcing the viewer to project the appropriate emotion (rage, grief, bemusement, vengefulness, consternation, love) from one of two available expressions. Seemed to work to their advantage somehow.
I have to admit that when Bush displays his not-nervous face (an increasingly rare occurrence) something about it warms me to the boy despite myself. I find myself thinking: "Well, maybe he's not such a bad guy after all." But the moment--like his expression itself--doesn't last long.