Drudge’s artful commentary

A reader pointed out yesterday that the Drudge Report by conspicuously placing the story of Obama’s crackdown on supposed police abuses near its long list of black riot stories (many of which I linked permanently here) was silently making a comment about Obama’s real priorities. Then another reader, Bill, sent this:

Re your entry, “Obama has noticed the black mob violence sweeping across America, and he’s doing something about it!”:

The DRUDGE staff’s surely intentional graphical/rhetorical juxtaposition did not elude me in the least today. Attached is the screen capture I sent to friends today after observing the obvious.

I added the arrows and moved the elements to the left to get everything into a tighter space.

Comments

Paul K. writes:

I have been taking note of Drudge’s artful juxtapositions for some time now. Look at today’s page, attached.

Above the headline, a story describes the difficult economic situation facing Americans working in the private sector, while, below the headline, two stories describe the luxuries enjoyed by bureaucrats. In the middle is a photo of Gov. Christopher Christie, looking like a sybaritic Sydney Greenstreet in his tuxedo, toasting with his wine glass. [LA replies: but it wouldn’t make sense that Christie is the object of criticism here, since the idea is that thousands of federal bureaucrats in New Jersey have higher salaries than Christie, the state’s governor. At the same time, your description of the Christie photo is accurate. So it seems that two contradictory messages are being sent at the same time, which could be seen as a further aspect of the artfulness.]

One of the most subversive juxtapositions Drudge created a few months ago put a photo of Sarah Palin holding up Trig, her Downs Syndrome child, near a picture of Janet Napolitano, whose features resemble Trig’s. It verges on very bad taste, but of course it’s up to the reader to make the connection.

LA writes:

Not apropos of anything, I have a certain pleasure that a governor of my oft-maligned native state is being touted as a presidential prospect. New Jersey has produced such an appalling string of sub-mediocre governors and U.S. senators for so long, as well as hapless Republican candidates for those offices, that it comes as something of a shock for a New Jersey governor, a Republican to boot, to be such a large (in both senses of the word) and dynamic national figure. Not only that, but Christie comes from the same part of New Jersey as myself, Essex County, and even from adjoining cities. I lived in South Orange in my teens. Christie is originally from Newark, just east of South Orange, then his family moved up South Orange Avenue to Livingston, which is just west of South Orange. So I feel a connection with Christie.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 01, 2011 08:17 AM | Send