Last updated on February 7th, 2013 at 10:09 pm
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney poses for photographs with students of Fairfield Elementary School, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Fairfield, Va. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
Admit it: it is a great photo. As Gawker said, it “is ripe for the captioning.” It appeared on Monday. On Tuesday, Bill O’Reilly made it popular. On Wednesday, the ever-hysterical World Net Daily proclaimed, “This is what the media is right now.’
“That picture never ever should have been published,” O’Reilly said Tuesday night. “You take a picture like that and you throw it away! Because there’s nothing worthy about it.”
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
“They would not have done that to President Obama. We all know that. So the person who did that at the Associated Press, who put that picture out on the wire, should be fired,” he fumed. “Whoever sent that out, whatever person sent that out, if I were in charge of the AP would have been fired.”
He predicted the AP would apologize but instead, the AP clarified. This should certainly be satisfactory to the GOP, which itself never apologizes but clarifies:
The Associated Press on Monday took and distributed six photos of Gov. Romney’s visit to an elementary school in Fairfield, Va., to its member news organizations and customers.
One image (at top, right), which showed Mr. Romney as he was crouching down to pose for a photo with the schoolchildren, received a caption addition on Tuesday to better explain what was happening. The caption addition was as follows:
CLARIFIES THAT STUDENT IS REACTING BECAUSE MITT ROMNEY WILL BE POSING FOR A PHOTO DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF HER AND HER CLASSMATES – Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney poses for photographs with students of Fairfield Elementary School, Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Fairfield, Va. A student, right, reacts as she realizes Romney will crouch down directly in front of her and her classmates for the group photo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll added on Wednesday:“The original caption on the photo of Gov. Romney taken Monday at a Virginia school was literally correct — it said the governor was posing for photos with schoolchildren. But it was too generic and missed the boat by not explaining exactly what was happening. The student with the surprised expression had just realized that the governor was going to crouch down in front of her for the group photo.
“We amended the caption on Tuesday with that explanation, but by then many people had seen the photo and were confused by or angry about it. Those generic captions help us process a large number of photos on a busy campaign day, but some photos demand more explanation and we fell short of our own standards by not providing it in this case.”
If you take a look at another photo you can see there was no real cause for fuss:
What was amusing was watching right-wing pundits get hysterical about their left-wing media bias meme. What they conveniently forget about is this photo of Barack Obama:
But Obama was not ogling the girl. As the Examiner explained,
An ABC News video (see below) clearly shows that Obama did not fix his stare at the girl at all. He appeared to be watching his own footing and then helping another woman (the one behind him in the photo) to get down the steep stair. Sarkozy, on the other hand, not only checked out the scenery, but craned his neck to get a longer view.
I don’t recall Bill-O demanding anybody being fired over at Drudge or anywhere else. No, of course he wouldn’t do that. The caption Drudge ran with was this: “Second Stimulus Package!”
At the time, Republicans thought this sort of thing was hilarious. Now that they’re on the recieving end, they don’t think it’s funny at all.
In the end, this is much ado about nothing, as The Blaze pretty much admits. Republicans had their laughs at Obama’s expense because of the Obama photo and Democrats get their laughs now over the Romney photo. Republicans are well known for demanding apologies over every little thing, expressing their outrage over things that pale in comparison to the things they themselves are doing.
This photo isn’t going to win or lose any elections and the fuss is just another example of the right trying to deflect attention away from the fact that they are stuck with a candidate without substance. Their strategy is to keep the electorate focused on what the Democrats are doing so nobody will notice their own, dishonest, underhanded behavior. No doubt all the offended readers at WND have also stopped reading the Drudge Report.
Nah, just kidding.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
