Friday, April 4, 2008

Weekend Video - Casey Knowles




Casey Knowles is the now 18 year old girl who was featured in Hillary Clinton's infamous "3 a.m." ads, credited with maintaining Clinton's dwindling lead in Texas. (The stock footage, shot when Knowles was 10, was licensed by Getty Images.) As it turns out Knowles is not only an Obama supporter, but a caucus captain, a precinct delegate, and potentially even a convention delegate for her home state of Washington. In this video, released by the Obama campaign, she gets to speak for herself.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent !
Politic and fear is a very bad mixing.
Thank's.

August

Anonymous said...

I appreciate the point you are making, that propagandists manipulate images in order to advance an idea, but it's not a particularly new point. The Clinton ad is just the latest example. I'll admit that it was a particularly egregious example. But virtually every political commercial engages in the same activity to some extent. In his rebuttal ad, for example, Obama was playing the same game...consider the photographs flashed of Casey Knowles as Obama volunteer. When where they taken? Before or after the Hilary ad ran? Were they originally taken in black and white or color? In today's world, I highly doubt they were originally shot in B&W, but the black and white presentation gave them a journalistic verite that color perhaps would not.

Now, for one ombudsman observation: It is clear James was making a point in this blog about media manipulation, but what isn't clear is whether he is also making a political point. Without a disclaimer to the contrary, ie, "This blog entry does not constitute an endorsement of Barack Obama," a reader has to conclude that that may indeed be the case. By being silent on that point, James runs the risk of a reader inference that casts doubt on his intentions (an inference that is heightened by the fact that the last image that a blog reader has is the words OBAMA '08 on the screen). In other words, is this blog post about media manipulation or is about Obama being more honest than Clinton?

Jaydee