Pictures, Words.

Perhaps because I can't vote in this country, I tend to follow the campaigns the way middle-aged men seem to watch golf - rooting for favorites, sure, but mostly interested in watching it all unfold. One of the things that I pay attention to is the way the media chooses to present the candidates - the sort of meta-analysis that is endlessly fascinating to people with a limited appreciation for policy. Somewhere (I couldn't track down where) I read about the idea of media frames, where some basic underlying assumption becomes an unstated truth, and informs all future reports about the candidate. So suddenly all Kerry stories begin with the premise that he is insincere, and all Bush stories with the premise that he is incompetent. What appealed to me about the frame idea is that it presented something that looks a lot to us like media bias, but suggested that the cause was actually not partisanship, moreso laziness. Reporters reach for an easy device with which to make their presentation of events intelligible to the reader. It's not that they actively want to push an agenda, but rather that a narrative structure suggests itself (or, more commonly now, is suggested to them) that they use out of convenience.

All of this may be only tangentially related to this graphic from the New York Times. I think it's fair to say that Hilary Clinton's divisiveness has become a standard frame in which to present her campaign. What struck me here, though, was way the issue was presented, with images of a happy, smiling, sunshiny Clinton contrasted with one more dark and dour. I think the Times often editorializes with its choice of pictures, but this seems particularly crude, and I wonder if it would be used as readily for a male candidate.