Tthe Republic Party’s base, which Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan courted so ardently and now represent, is deeply implicated in the sponsorship, funding, production, and initial distribution of “Innocence of Muslims,” and has direct responsibility for the consequent Muslim protests now raging around the world over this short film. Yet, so far as I know, nowhere in the media coverage of all this has anyone addressed these connections. […]
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The propaganda film “Innocence of Muslims” was entirely sponsored and produced by elements of the wingnut anti-Islamist evangelical Christian right in the U.S. By dint of their close association with their base, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan bear a considerable degree of responsibility for the conflagrations touched off by the film, including the one that took the life of Ambassador Christopher J. Stevens. Time to put them on the hook for that and watch them try to wriggle off. […] Did Romney bronze himself up? He definitely looks more tan in those screenshots than he does in images from the days before and after his Univision moment. And I’d put nothing past Romney and his posse. But here’s where the photo critic in me kicks in. Those images weren’t all made with the same combination of camera, lens, film and filter (or digital settings), under standardized or comparable lighting conditions. So I feel more inclined to chalk this up to the vagaries of TV makeup in combination with studio lighting than to either a desperate Romney campaign attempt to woo Hispanic voters or a malicious makeup artist’s subversion. […] The Man Behind the Mask Ignorance is a condition; dumbness is a commitment. — Richard Kirstel • Mitt Romney is a deeply committed fellow. As a result, he has serious image problems. A week after falsely describing a statement from the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya […] |
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Election 2012: Image World (7)
With this mediocre production Mark Basseley Youssef has demonstrated the radical right’s eagerness to provoke Muslim outrage with deliberate sacrilege while simultaneously making visible the criminally irresponsible face of fundamentalist Islam. At the same time, he’s seeded a minefield for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who can’t denounce this hypothetical movie (or its all-too-real trailer) in any but the vaguest terms without alienating the Reblican base from which it sprang. […]