The Obama-Biden photo idiotically deconstructed 'round the conservative blogosphere

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Really? This is how conservatives are wasting their (and our) time? (Over)analyzing a photo of Obama and Biden, coming up with ridiculous interpretations to attack the president?

Here's the photo.

Glenn Reynolds tells us to "[a]nalyze the body language."

And then: "No, I don't think Obama’s facial expression is just a fluke of when the shutter went off. His eyes aren't closed, as some with poor displays seem to think."

And then: "Obama's showing contempt -- or so it seems to me -- for the guy he picked as his running mate."

Yeah, so it seems to him -- so it seems through a lens of vicious right-wing partisanship. This ranks with the stupidest posts you'll find from conservative bloggers, and that's saying something. (Really, Glenn, you think you're saying something intelligent here?)

Andrew Sullivan is right, this is "photo-smearing Obama." Now, I don't see this as a racial/racist issues, with Obama "condescending to a white man," as Andrew thinks the conservative reading might be, and I don't necessarily think that's what (all) conservatives see here.

For what's funny is that there's no consistency to what conservatives are saying. Reynolds again: "It's interesting to read the comments, where what people see is very different depending on who's posting. Well, Obama did say that he had cultivated the ability to be a blank screen onto which people could project things.

So, then, what? He takes a cheap shot at Obama here -- couldn't a photo of anyone be "a blank screen"? -- but the point is that different people have different perspectives, and different interpretations. So why bother making much ado about a single photo, telling us to interpret body language and facial expression in complete absence of context?

Thankfully, there is a tiny shred of common sense on the right. As my friend Ed Morrissey puts it: "I'm sure that all is well between the two, and that this is just a fluke of photography." Now, he goes on to rip Biden, who from all accounts is a major player behind the scenes in the White House, and a trusted advisor to the president, but, he concludes, "why not have a little fun with this?"

Well, fine. We've all done those write-your-own-caption things before -- and this photo lends itself to that. So, then, have some fun, and don't try to make the photo mean something terribly profound, something to use as a partisan weapon, something you "analyze" to fit your partisan prejudices. For if you do, like Reynolds and others do, acting like a postmodernist without any qualifications whatsoever, without any bases for your "analyses," you'll just end up embarrassing yourself, proving yourself to be the desperate, demented partisan hack you really are.