Monday, September 01, 2008

Fear and Loathing on the Internet

My initial tendency is to think that John McCain has made a gigantic asshole out of himself, nominating an ultra far right MILF hottie to be his VP in hopes she'll hypnotize a few of the more moronic Hillary mavens.

Having said that, though, I find stuff like this to both contemptible and despicable:

I usually enjoy Kunstler's writing style (while dryly noting to myself whenever I read his latest 'America is DOOOOOOOMed' announcement that if he were a meteorologist with the same accuracy as he is a social prognosticator, he'd be an unemployable industry laughingstock) but stuff like this is just vile.

At first glance, gullible though I naturally am, I got all excited at the photo -- not for the obvious reasons (well, not exclusively, anyway, I am, after all, a mere man) but because I was thinking "geez, this is gonna be a tough pic for the McCain campaign to spin". I felt a little guilty for thinking that, because, honestly, a person's taste in swimwear really shouldn't be held against them, nor used as a basis for judging their qualifications to be U.S. Vice President. Nonetheless, I was pretty sure the conservative base that is currently going coo-coo for Palin puffs would stop dead, and then start shrieking in outrage, when they got a look at THAT particular graphic.

Well, they should scream in outrage. We all should. Once I thought about it for a second (and it's embarrassing it even took me that long, but, hey, a liberal can dream) I realized that this pic nearly had to be a photoshopped fake. And one quick Google search later, I confirmed it.

For those of you not in the know, here's how this sort of thing is done:

You go out and find a pic of your intended victim. Crop the head. Use a photoshop program to fuzz it up a little, then flip it horizontally so it won't look identical to the source graphic you stole it from.

Then, paste it onto some pic of some chick in a bikini doing something ridiculous, like holding an automatic rifle next to a swimming pool.



Then, do a quick blog post referring to a woman you know nothing much about (except that she's a state governor and now a nominee for Vice President) as 'trailer trash' while mocking her over an entirely personal, doubtless extremely stressful family situation involving one of her children. Use your newly photoshopped graphic as illustrative support for your snarky libels. Voila! You're a worthless little turd. Easy as pie.

I used to have some respect for Kunstler. Now, all I have for him is contempt and regret -- the last, mostly, because I actually spent money on one of his books.

I sincerely hope the Feds can track down whoever originated this graphic, and that the Palin family sues their ass off.

UPDATE, a day later:

Weirdly, the front page of Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo is currently using the exact same cropped Palin head on a graphic of their own:



I did post a link to this particular entry over at my TPM blog, but it's gotten little attention, so I can't believe this is anything but a coincidence. Strange one, though...

3 comments:

  1. I agree with you; things like that are despicable. Just because you can do something in Photoshop doesn't mean that you should.

    And any arguments about McCain's choice should be based on policy and her past performance and experience, not on this ridiculous shit.

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  2. Anonymous1:47 PM

    Good for you, dude. And this is one of the less disgusting things I've seen in the goodguyosphere as a result of Palin's pick.

    Things are so bad that there's a thread over on Obsidian Wings where a bunch of Instapundit trolls are shitting all over the regular commenters--and THEY'RE IN THE RIGHT. I'm reduced to taking this fundie loon's side on every blog I frequent.

    I can't believe I've turned into one of those "not helpful"-spouting, sanctimonious concern-troll types; I've got a long and distinguished record of "not getting it," y'know? But good God, the loutishness is just off the charts.

    Add to which, the political tone-deafness of it all is staggering. If we could pick up a couple states with this stuff, fine, then we could soul-search about whether or not to do good by doing wrong. But it's just. So. Obvious that it'll blow up in our faces.

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  3. O,

    I tend to think that anything you CAN do with Photoshop you certainly SHOULD do, but you certainly don't need to turn the product of your perverted genius over to a billion avid eyeballs on the Internet.

    Gil,

    Thanks for stopping by. I absolutely agree with your point, see my latest post.

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