In defense of McCain and the stupid tongue-out pictures .......

Back in the day, the Jimmy Olsons of the world had to load a new bulb into the old Speed Graphic, heft the beast up to his brow, and watch the action through the viewfinder, waiting for the exact best moment to press the shutter release.



Then we had Nikons.



Then motor drives.



Then very fast film and faster motor drives.

And then we got the ability to pull excellent quality stills from digital video.



The point is that anyone can get caught looking totally stupid. Even smart people.

But, to be fair, we never seem to see pictures of Obama looking stupid. And so far, none of Sarah Palin.

Bush ..... he's just a natural magnet for stupid. Stupid always has an affinity for more of the same.

McCain ..... when you are, in fact, a shuffling old man, you're more likely to be caught on tape (hard drive, actually) looking like exactly that.



I really do think, however, that if we were still doing news pictures like Jimmy Olson did in his cub reporter days back at the Daily Planet, we'd be seeing dramatically less of that stupid shot of McCain from last night.

look at. It's like the physical manifestation of the nature of McCains entire campaign.

I guess he thought the hamster was still chiseling away inside the camera . . .

I don't know why he had his tongue out, but saw it live and he was a little confused about which way he was supposed to walk. The tongue was a reaction to that, probably completely involumtary but an attempt to be self-deprecatingly funny.

No matter ...... he does this sort of thing naturally (and in my view there is really nothing 'wrong' with him in doing this) and is easy to be caught at it.

Obama is just naturally cool and always looks cool. Similarly, Palin is poised and self confident. She absolutely comes off stupid when sound is involved, but when it is just visual, she does way better than average.

I don't want to see his tongue, or the tongue of anyone over 12 years old.

Both incidents were so quick you could have missed it. McCain was going to follow McCain around the table towards Schaeffer instead of going around the opposite way. It looked like McCain realizaed his mistake very quickly and did that in a joking gesture and turned the other way. The other tongue out was the same kind of thing, yes, he did it. But most people wouldn't have noticed. They may have noticed the movement but not many would have picked up on the tongue out. So I think it is all pretty innocent.

And, it is funny as sh*t. I'm convinced that is why we have so many Chimpy looking stupid pics over the last few years. Of course, it doesn't seem like they have caught many, if any at all of Obama doing the same thing.

He occasionally goofs as a release of tension, probably. Obama just doesn't do that kind of thing. He pretty much always looks poised in public. (Unless he's playing bumper cars with his girls! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/16/the-obamas-greatest-famil_n_132339.html)

Last night McCain displayed a massive amount of tics. I don't think two seconds went by in the entire debate when he wasn't doing something strange. You had blinking several times a second, mugging and scrunching up his face, smirking, snorting, head-shaking, rolling his eyes (at times almost to the back of his head), gestures with his hands like air-quotes and hunching of his shoulders.

I think there's something wrong with this guy and the American people haven't noticed it before because he's never been under the microscope like this. And he's stuck his tongue out on other occasions (in the previous debate it was out of his mouth often). He's a mass of nervous tics.

And I can find a frame that will make anyone look wacko.

I can't understand the need here to provide ANY defense of McCain. He forfeited that expectation when he began his dishonest and inflammatory campaign against Obama. Fuck him. There is no intelligent shot of the creep to be had.

Just teasing you...but you know that

With my 50+ year old Argus... it belonged to my father-in-law... no one wanted it... I knew he loved it, so I took it and kept it working. Still the best lenses I've ever worked with.

Not so with John McCain.

still got some amazing shots. The photo of the first flight at Kitty Hawk was taken by a guy who had never taken a photo before.
Oh, and we do have the wink from Sarah.

"Stamps! Must. Lick. STAMPS!":rofl:

I said sometimes.

I still have and use the Canon A1 I bought in '81. Getting harder to find the battery though.

-Hoot

My lucky shot was a swan with 4 seagulls taking flight next to it. It's a beautifully composed shot that I had little to do with, just pressed the button at the right time. Most of my photos, proof sheets and negatives were destroyed in a flood a few years ago. I have that one, though.

Someone in that audience might have gotten lucky with that shot were we still using 35mm. SLR cameras or even Instamatics or Brownies. Even with slow films we could push it with only a loss in resolution, something that wouldn't matter with the typical newspaper--or flyer--photo.

I wonder what he was gagging on. He's going to spend the rest of his life living down that shot. It's going to be an iconic one.

to leave the stage so he made the gesture to show he felt stupid but in that shot it looks like something far from what it really was.

Oh, the poor, desperate bigot.

..... ***anybody*** can be made to look stupid if one can cut stills from real time video.

Was that a frame grab as well? C-SPAN aired a split-screen for the duration of the debate. McCain was constantly making faces whenever he thought that the camera was off him.

after Obama talked about how people are fed up with "old politics".

He seemed visibly agitated and his tongue-darting was even more pronounced than usual.

:P

Dukakis was caught looking slightly less than presidential. Now here's McCain, looking completely ridiculous! But we're so used to it, it probably won't do anything to his campaign.