Ridiculously Unfair?

Fox News is outraged by Newsweek's covershot of Palin, which has not been retouched. Apparently, some people think it was cruel and an attack on her for being a "normal" person with flaws. Fox compares it to one of Obama's covershots that is particularly flattering.

Watch the video here:


I really liked the point that Julia made that we shouldn't expect magazines to give political candidates the same kind of retouching we expect to see on supermodels. Palin is not in a beauty pageant here (although many male Republicans might disagree).

Anyway, this got me interested about what kind of photos Newsweek has used of Obama in the past. What I came across was this image:

You can view a gigantic version of Palin's Newsweek cover HERE for comparison.

The image I posted above of Obama on the cover of Newsweek (facial imperfections and all) actually never made it to the newsstands. According to Gawker, this cover was pulled last-minute at the suggestion of the editor's wife who thought this brighter cover would be better:

I guess there are two different ways of looking at this. 1) Newsweek almost used an equally "honest" photo of Obama, so Republicans really shouldn't be complaining about Palin's photo that is certainly no less Photoshopped than Obama's... or 2) Newsweek pulled the unflattering photo of Obama last-minute and didn't do the same for Palin, which is unfair and... sexist? I assume that's where the McCain campaign will be going with this next.

I happen to think that Obama's original cover being changed last-minute was probably based entirely on the whim of one single person at the magazine (in this case, the editor's wife) and therefore I don't think it counts as the entire magazine deciding on a nicer picture of Obama than of Palin. I think this is really pushing it - something McCain and his people have been quite good at lately.

If we think back to when Hillary Clinton was still in the race, how many awful pictures were there of her floating around?? Was Fox News complaining then?

To me, this just seems like another last ditch attempt by McCain supporters to gain favor because something as simple as an unflattering photo of Palin is such a terrible, damaging attack on the Republican candidates.

Is that all they've got?

Obama Just As Misleading As McCain

Senator Obama has been running an ad recently that has been "Scaring Seniors," according to Newsweek. His ad is about social security, and Senator McCain's support of privatization of the system. According to Newsweek, the ad is flawed and misleading. Watch below:


In the linked article above, Lori Robertson and Brooks Jackson from www.Factcheck.org go step-by-step through the Obama ad pointing out the many misleading details. I'm not going to repeat them all here, but just to sum up - Senator Obama's ad strongly implies that senior citizens should be concerned that their social security checks that many of them rely on are going to be cut in half should Senator McCain become president.

From "Scaring Seniors"
The ad refers to a Bush proposal from 2005 to hold down the growth of benefits for future retirees. Compared to the buying power of benefits paid to today's retirees, that would not have been a "cut" for anybody. It would have been a "cut" of half only in relation to benefits now promised to retirees who have yet to be born. And for average workers, that "cut" in 2075 was projected by one of Obama's own economic advisers to be 28 percent, not "half."

The article goes on to quote Senator McCain in 2007 saying, "...It's got to be bipartisan..." when referring to the Social Security reforms necessary to keep the system from going broke. Overall, it becomes very clear that Obama is being just as misleading in his advertising as McCain was with his recent Katie Couric WebAd.

"Can you really afford more of the same?" That's the closing line of the Obama-Biden Social Security ad. In its own way, this is more of the same - misleading ads that are then exposed in the media.