i don't always agree with you, but on this one you're spot on. i've been very open about this at daily kos: markos has posted on this something like five times, even though professional graphics people in his own community have repeatedly told him he is wrong. he has no remaining credibility. he is a smear merchant. despite the best efforts of his best front pagers (some of whom i really love), his reality-based community no longer exists. and he is a boon to the right wing. hannity, limbaugh, andrew sullivan, and the new york post have all directly cited him.
Posted by Turkana at March 7, 2008 05:35 PMTurkana, Kos's roots are in the right wing.
He is just returning to them.
Funny how right wing politics and smearing go hand in hand. When Kos was progressive, his site was a beacon; now that he's reverted, it's just Little Orange Footballs.
Let's not skip over the part where Clinton's staffers are referred to as 'vermin'.
Posted by Jim DeRosa at March 7, 2008 05:55 PMThe factcheck article indicates:
A standard technique used in attack ads is to portray the opponent in black and white while showing the person being supported in glorious, flattering color. And attack ads often use dark images to convey a sinister tone to the message.
...
And in fact, when we compared the frames in the ad to frames from the debate video using the "eyedropper" tool in Photoshop image-processing software, we found that the frames in the Clinton ad are uniformly darker. We found no pronounced difference in the degree to which Obama's skin, as opposed to his tie, his shirt, or the backdrop was darkened.
Obviously, the Clinton campaign did darken the image to make Obama appear worse, but there is no evidence of specific racial motivation. It's just a classic old style smarmy commercial.
Posted by CA Pol Junkie at March 7, 2008 05:59 PMLookie in the mirror sometime.
Posted by onar at March 7, 2008 06:01 PMe-rip -
you're right on.
and it takes some nerve to speak out publicly against the great orange satan.
but i can tell you, and markos zuniga,
that you are saying what i have been thinking privately,
and not just about his railing on about the alleged nose job.
it's okay to care.
it's okay to have a favorite.
it's okay to be prejudiced for your candidate, your child, your cuisine, etc.
it's not okay to lose your sense of good judgment,
and you, markos, has lost yours.
why i don't know.
markos!
go to the quiet room!
now!
and sit there for the next two hours -
no friends, no books, no crayons, no posting.
joking aside, markos,
this kind of behavior marks a person and his weblog for a VERY long time AFTER the war has ended.
do you really want to give yourself this tattoo?
I wonder if traffic is way down over there?
Posted by OldCoastie at March 7, 2008 06:07 PMdo you really want to give yourself this tattoo?
That's a damn fine phrase on a mighty lyrical post, orionATL. Kudos!
I wonder if traffic is way down over there?
Well, you're gonna have an uptick in lookie-loos checking in to watch the carnage, I suppose, so it just might even out.
Posted by iamcoyote at March 7, 2008 06:39 PMBRAVO!! BRAVO!! Finally someone spoke up. Thank you dear friend.
Posted by tarheel74 at March 7, 2008 06:41 PMold coastie,
traffic's at record levels. quantity over quality. he's proud of it.
Posted by Turkana at March 7, 2008 06:43 PMCA Pol Junkie,
No one has proven that the source of the video that the Clinton campaign got had the same shade. No one has proven that the shade was adjusted down deliberately and that too at the insistence of the campaign. In fact, it has now been proven that the shade of the ad was actually brighter than the shade in the online version of the debate posted by MSNBC! To me this is just another example of Obama supporters falsely accusing the Clintons of race-baiting.
Posted by eriposte at March 7, 2008 06:56 PMA more thorough debunking of the ad at Cannonfire.
Posted by jen at March 7, 2008 06:59 PMTurkana,
Actually I probably find ourselves much more in agreement usually than disagreement :-)
Posted by eriposte at March 7, 2008 07:06 PMbeing one of the people who led the charge debunking this scurrilous smear on Dailykos from day one I am proud that someone has picked it up and called Markos out on it.
Posted by tarheel74 at March 7, 2008 07:07 PMYou are totally correct. When I first read about Clinton darkening Obama, I laughed. It was too idiotic to take it seriously. If Obama is trying to be white then I'd say that's his problem. Being Latino I'm certain that prejudiced people are not influenced by one or two shades of skin color because their prejudiced is race driven. Obama has garnered almost 90 percent of the black vote because he is black and I assume he is happy of that fact. I diagnose the Obama supporters as paranoid.
Posted by Prabhata at March 7, 2008 07:07 PMWow. A dose of sanity. What a relief. No bile. No vitriol. Just calm, reasoned discussion. What a concept! DocuDharma and now here. I'll have to re-arrange my bookmarks now.
BTW, at least with Hillary all the warts have been pointed out going back to Whitewater. Blemish-free people do not exist. There is no such person alive. I thank PlainWords for quoting Joe Wilson. I think I'll drop that in a comment at another site and see what happens. ;-)
Thanks all. I was wondering where the grown-ups had gone.
Posted by RUKind at March 7, 2008 07:10 PM"I diagnose the Obama supporters as paranoid."
and it seems that those upper middle-class, white, college-educated, Obama supporters seem a little obsessed with Obama's too dark/too light/ just right skin tone.
hmmm.
I agree with the junkie.
It is standard practice to use color and contrast to set the mood in political ads. Nothing here but but standard fare.
I was shocked when I read Markos state, as if it were established fact, that the Clinton ad people had stretched Obamas face to "give him a wider nose". I don't spend a lot of time there but that pretty much was the last thing I'll be reading over there for a long time.
Posted by snark at March 7, 2008 07:57 PMI agree with the junkie.
You know, every time I've said that, I've come to regret it. *smirk*
I was shocked when I read Markos state...
I wasn't shocked when Kos front paged the story, hell, I predicted it, but I was embarrassed for him at the vehemence with which he did so. I just wanted to shake him and say "you can sail through this if you just don't take sides! That's the prerequisite to longevity, you dolt!" As orionATL asked, "do you really want to give yourself this tattoo?"
Posted by iamcoyote at March 7, 2008 08:23 PMeriposte,
no question- we agree on most thing...
Posted by Turkana at March 7, 2008 09:20 PMIve gotta say, I dont think these progressive blogs have changed much. I think youre just experiencing them from the other side now. The truth is that both extremes of the parties are nutty. Its just when youre on the same side as them you dont notice it.
Posted by Jonesy at March 7, 2008 09:27 PMWow, Spencer Ackerman really wrote that? CDS claims another one.
Posted by Orange at March 7, 2008 09:52 PMBack in the days before Photoshop... I recall a campaign here in NE where the guy's (no women back then) photo had been touched up with phallic images carefully hidden in his hair, the background, etc. Turned out to be a fairly common practice. I think it was aimed at the female vote. And, unintentionally, the gay vote except no one talked about them then and gay meant happy.
Some things never change. Some do. In the long run usually for the better. You have to be very patient though.
Posted by RUKind at March 7, 2008 10:31 PMeriposte, thank you for another of your wonderful posts! you've been one of my heroes in calling out the BS in this campaign, and this one just gave me a good laugh. :)
Posted by kangeroo at March 8, 2008 02:38 AMBob Altemeyer might have to change his studies on authoritarians. He said he never found actual examples of authoritarian mindsets on the left, but there are a lot of alleged lefties acting pretty much like authoritarians these days. Several "lefty" blogs are looking and sounding like the righty blogs from a few years ago.
This might be a sign that the GOP really is dying. There are quite a few former right-wing types now calling themselves Democrats. John Cole of Balloon Juice is an example.
Posted by myiq2xu at March 8, 2008 04:04 AMGreat post. Obama’s aid was right. Hillary is a monster. Of course not the same kind of monster as Hitler, Mao & Stalin; but a monster nonetheless.
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
claim to care for people
call yourself progressive
your policies hurt poor folk
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
elect women presidents
who cover for their husbands
who rape other women
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
vote for any woman
better than any man
none could make things any worse
.
if you’re MAD
punish your country
VOTE for Hillary
.
http://www.hillaryproject.com/
Go here and watch ‘The Hillary Show’, with Howard Dean. It’s Hillarious!
http://www.stophernow.com/
:)
.
Yeah, that's some DEFINITIVE report from FactCheck.org there:
"Still, the Clinton ad makers may have darkened the Obama images intentionally, to some degree. When it comes to video editing, the possibilities are overwhelming....
Note that the article goes on to cite reasons to darken an ad that aren't racist.
Look, I find FactCheck's explanations credible, particularly in regards to the screen capture from the TV broadcast, although that's short on reportable facts, like how it was captured, on what machine, were color adjustments performed, etc. What the hell is a "high-quality version?" That has no technical meaning. Still, despite that, I find the screen capture credible, but that's just an opinion, not a fact.
Not even FactCheck.org are claiming they have a definitive fact or answer. Indeed, they admit it could be racist.
I have always said the ad was darkened, just that we don't know why, YET. I maintain that position. And accusing Kos and others of being wrong in their opinion is just as unsupported as their comments and mine. In fact, they're right, the image was darkened, we just don't know with certainty why.
If the Clinton campaign gave a crud about this and felt like clearing this up, they'd turn over the "original" working files for examination by someone such as FactChecker.org, as well as make the video production people available for commenting on it. Short of that, there won't be a definitive answer.
Posted by Brian Bell at March 8, 2008 05:01 AMThank you for this post. It has been amazing to me how the progressive blogs, especially DK, have gone completely into the gutter this campaign season. Historical analysis awaits after the election, and it definitely won't be pretty. The DK site has become Lord of the Flies - a mob mentality that is very ugly. Their traffic is up, but not because interesting new people have come to the site. Instead, rational and interesting people have fled and they've been replaced by an influx of angry frat boys and hatemongerers. I swear, you get the feeling over there that if any of them were placee in a room with Clinton, they might literally rip her to shreds. It's pure aggression and violence.
But the last straw was that post by Markos - how completely ridiculous. He has embarrassed himself beyond repair at this point. In addition to being vapid and stupid, that post was the most irresponsible thing I've seen from him - a deliberate attempt to incite more hatred, with empty accusations of racism. I asked where the evidence was for those charges, and was immediately flamed by hundreds who claimed "well where is the evidence against?" Apparently that is the new standard for the reality-based community - say anything you want, no evidence required, the burden of proof is on the accused to prove it didn't happen. Meanwhile, the damage has been done, and the hatred feels more justified than ever.
They seem to just *need* to hate her, and they go about finding ways to rationalize that hatred. I am disgusted.
Look whose playing the race card now?
Do these people realize how they've just soiled their reputations all for what....just to vent their hatred of a candidate from their party...jeebus h. kerist. I guess they don't care if they've flushed their reputations down the toilet. Spencer Ackerman too...wow...how sad....how freakin sad.
There are some wonderful extremely talented and intelligent reflective front pagers over there. They must be embarrassed to post and be affiliated over there...I would be.
For the past couple of months I've been wondering how this type of thing could happen over at kos' site. I have mulled over several possibilities ...insanity, infested with rightwingers who are just causing problems and fueling the fans of divide and conquer strategy, a bit of both, ..but even one imaginitive semi hopeful explanation is that this was all just some sort of poliscience-psychological experiment/study (funded by some universities) going on (with kos' blessing) to see just how groupthink and cults get going so they could learn strategies to effectively counteract them and we'd learn all about it later.
I mean really the other day I glanced at a few comments in one of the multiple kos front page posts on the he's blacker and Hillary's a racist issue and it had several people getting hugely psyched because Sean Hannity and Faux News were covering it. Of course with many recommends. These were the same people and website who went ballistic railing against Faux News and more specifically Senator Clinton (shocker) just a month or so ago because she said she'd debate on Faux's network. The same people that now regularly provide links to Drudge and POlitico stories routinely. They don't even realize the double standard and hypocrisy. They don't even realize how easily they've been played by right leaning websites or if they do they don't care (I'm not sure which is worse). How freaking sad...they're so blinded by their rage and hatred they look, sound, and act just like republicans these days. I don't want any part of that bandwagon or movement. ONly will get my vote nothing more.
Lastly and a bit off topic looks like another case of Obama says one thing in public and his advisers say another thing (this one said it in public too). Latest is with the FiSa issue. I will take Senator Obama at his word, he said he disagreed with his campaign's intelligence advisor who said telco immunity should be a part of the FISA overhaul. Looks like we're seeing a pattern here of his campaign taking both sides of an issue...that will be a problem.
emai:
Sadly, I think that your phrase "blinded by their rage and hatred" is the only real explanation of this behavior. It is hard to watch but that is what has happened. The villification of Clinton started decades ago by the right wing nutters, and all it took was to nurture those seeds by irrational, immature lefties to get it into full bloom again.
It's hard to know what to do at this point. You can't have rational conversations with these people.
Posted by at March 8, 2008 07:01 AMemal, I think Markos' front-paging of it was a deliberate attempt to get Fox, or any news station to pick up the "darker ad" story. He knows tv people are reading the blogs now, and I'm sure he knows what type of crap they love to blast around. He was catapulting the propaganda, and if Fox picked it up, it worked. Sad.
Posted by iamcoyote at March 8, 2008 07:14 AMI am grateful for the link to my debunking of Kos' smear.
I ran this analysis by a friend of mine who is professional video editor. (His clients have included the top studios.) He agreed with my analysis, then pointed out one obvious fact:
EVERYTHING in that Clinton commercial is darkened in its online incarnation! The shot of the White House. The shots of Hillary. The shots of the sleeping kid.
The shot of Barack Obama is the lightest image in the show.
If Kos had any brains, he would have looked at the whole thing, instead of just one shot taken out of context.
If this was a case of degrading the image of an opponent, then why does the online version of hte commercial darken the image of Hillary? Why darken the White House? I mean, just look at the video again -- the whole thing. Would any cinematographer in his right mind WANT that shot of the White House to look so murky? I'm sure the original footage looks much better.
The compression schemes used to create online videos routinely darken the imagery. Most of the clips on YouTube are darker than they should be. Go to Comedy Central and look at the clips of Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. Now compare those clips to an actual broadcast (on a decent-quality TV) of their shows. Notice anything?
Actually, and weirdly, the audience never DID notice anything wrong, even though image degradation is all over the freaking internet. (I'm always amazed at the obliviousness of the audience.) People opened their eyes only when Barack Obama ran for office. And that's when the dummies fastened onto conspiratorial conclusions, instead of researching the technology.
Compare a storebought DVD to a downloaded DivX version of the same movie. DivX is a fine codec, but it usually darkens the image. If I'm looking at a DivX, I almost always have to brighten it during playback in order to see shadow detail.
Still, I think this lie will continue to haunt us for years to come. Paranoia junkies prefer fear to facts.
Posted by Joseph Cannon at March 8, 2008 07:49 AMiamcoyote, I've no doubt it was deliberate by kos either. From what I remember, he started his own serial posting on the story the day after Clinton picked up popular vote wins in RI, OH, and TX. He had written 3 or 4 post in a row on the issue. One even had one post with "a reader writes" in email to tell us it was most definitively deliberate racism on Clinton's part based on this one single reader's (anonymous of course) expertise with film/production/photography or some such nonsense. The original story/sources (or three) were up there at the top of the reck-commended diaries list the day before he started on his tirade I believe.
Yup that comment from a single reader was right up there with the kerning crap from the TANG story. I think he's continuing to beat this ...there was a post from him yesterday regarding Harold Ford being made to look sinister and blacker in an add once too. (I thought Markos didn't care for DLC-er Ford but I digress). I just skimmed it and laughed. I think he might be trying to keep the Obama base motivated and angry.
I believe he's continuing to make a mockery of himself, his site, the movement, and the party by continuing down this destructive path...he (and several others it looks like) need an intervention. He's feeding right into kkKarl's hand of divide and conquer.
Posted by emal at March 8, 2008 07:58 AMIs there any doubt now that the Obama campaign, and surrogates, like MarKos are responsible for all of the race-baiting in this campaign?
The reason this doesn't get any play in the MSM is because they fell for the race-baiting one time, and they aint gonna buy it anymore. I find it reprehensible that the media legitimized the racial swift-boating against the Clinton's in the first place, but I realize the hatred for them in the "village" and apparently most of the left blogosphere is such that they couldn't help themselves. But they got played by the Obama campaign, as did a lot of voters.
I'm a Democrat, so I'm voting for the nominee, but I'm gonna be proud of it if it winds up being Obama, mostly because of the company he keeps.
The Kossacks really think they are some kind of king-makers, and Kos himself seems to be drunk on power. Do not be surprised that if HRC wins the nomination they not only refuse to support the nominee, but actively campaign against her. Arianna too.
Posted by jb64 at March 8, 2008 08:04 AMOoops.... meant to say NOT gonna be proud of it if it winds up being Obama
Posted by jb64 at March 8, 2008 08:07 AM