135 Comments

1. Lifeofthemind:

My suspicion is that the successful liar chooses to deliver a largely emotional message wrapped around nuggets of pseudo information. The mind rejects a purely content free message, even Seinfeld couldn’t offer shows about absolutely nothing. The key is to choose false content that is sufficiently esoteric that most members of the audience will be unable to absolutely refute it on the spot. How many people felt qualified to challenge Ward Churchill’s claim that he was a Native American?

Often I have had an aggressive young leftist attempt to end a debate by demanding the production of a citation on some point, as if we were engaged in some dissertation defense. By invalidating argument that hasn’t prepared reference to approved authority and preparing their own positions based on claims that are hard to verify or invalidate they avoid challenges to the overall message.

Robert Heinlein had Jubal Harshaw say he won debates by referring to “The British Colonial Shipping Board,” knowing his debater would be unaware that there was no such body. Adolph Hitler famously acknowledged the utility of the big lie in Mein Kampf.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:02 am 2. Marie Claude:

there was a fashion in Arts schools in the nineties, of such works made with photoshop tools, reproducted as paintings, where Andy Wharol, Lichtenstein, (and Richter in Europe) were the inspirators

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:10 am 3. Lifeofthemind:

[after observing the gambling tables at Rick's]
Customer: Are you sure this place is honest?
Carl: Honest? As honest as the day is long!
- fm Casablanca

Apologies for only finding the colorized version.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:30 am 4. dan:

All I know is some brave psychotic just blew apart 5 senior officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard while they were in a tribal conference. They shoot, they score!

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:39 am 5. hdgreene:

The left has a number of hierarchical relationships among its many groups. When any of their groups get into disputes with the wider society, they unite together. It is only when they get into disputes with each other that we can sort out the hierarchy. The AP is full of accomplished leftist liars. In fact, its role (along with the NYT and the network news) is to validate the lies of the left. The entire “news media” is, in fact, the Lying King. Their job is to take the square peg of reality and drive it clear through the round hole of their ideology, splintering off the inconvenient parts as they do so. The job of the rest of us is to accept — and pay for — the mangled results. Because of their past abuses they no longer enjoy a monopoly on information, which is rather inconvenient for them. They have actually created an industry dedicated to deciphering their reporting — which is better described as deciphering their ciphering.

One of the reasons that President Obama comes across as articulate is that he can say pretty much anything and his utterances do not have to comport well with reality. This is because the AP et. al. took logic and reason out the back door and shot it (and I say this despite the occasional fact-checking article that subsequently goes nowhere). To the Left, this Fairey character is practicing without getting the proper endorsements on his license. Of course, they wait until the election is over before the little squabble is allowed to surface.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:42 am 6. Doug:

Dan,
Indeed he did!
—
It seems to me the poster should be covered by fair use:
The trick was to imitate Soviet “art” – he could have used any of thousands of photos.
…I guess the workaround would be to put the effort into ’shopping a collage first,
then posterizing that.

‘course if it offended the Hussein Regime, they’d bust you anyhow, as they did the insurance companies.
—
hdGreene:
Yeah, he’s JUDGED to be articulate
by a jury sworn not to be judgmental.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:51 am 7. JFSanders031:

I am beginning to believe that lying in all of it’s various forms is a thing worse than any other sin. Even worse than pedophilia(MPBIHFAE).

The demand for citation is the leftist’s hammer. They go to it at the first twinge of defeat. And you can tell you’re getting under their skin because without fail they redden in the face.

“Lying is sustainable for longish periods only when practiced in moderation.”

I have just finished an article in the online NYT (Russia’s leaders see Chinese as the new model). And your quote goes directly to the reasons that Totalitarianism in all it’s manifestations consistently fails.

It is all one big lie.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:54 am 8. Doug:

“What initially disturbed me about the art of Shepard Fairey is that it displays none of the line, modeling and other idiosyncrasies that reveal an artist’s unique personal style. His imagery appears as though it’s xeroxed or run through some computer graphics program; that is to say, it is machine art that any second-rate art student could produce.”
—
Why should that disqualify anyone from selling a poster?

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:04 am 9. RWE:

Everyone’s heard of the Woodward and Bernstine book on Watergate, “All the President’s Men” but few people have heard of the real definitive work on the subject “Silent Coup.” Silent Coup was written some years after Watergate and it tells the real story. This is not unusual. Even casual students of history quickly recognize that works written “in the moment” may provide some interesting details and a sense of the spirit of the times, but can be nowhere as accurate as those written years later. For example, WWII books on air combat written during that time typically omit all references to radar.

But when Silent Coup came out the lawsuits flew. The Washington Post sued the authors simply because the new book reflected so poorly on their own fabulous work. John Dean sued the authors and a few dozen other yet-to-be-named co conspirators because the book revealed the real reason for the break-in. None of the lawsuits brought anything, because it was a case of the lies suing the truth.

20 years after Watergate there was a renewed interest in it. One article I read told of a college class that was studying the subject, and each student proudly held up his copy of “All the President’s Men” – apparently unaware of the later and more accurate work. They were not studying Watergate; they were studying the hype and myths about Watergate.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:12 am 10. wretchard:

What’s fascinating about the Obama poster story is how it was stolen to order. Los Angeles Columns describes how Yosi Sergant, the former NEA person who attempted to drum up the support of ‘artists’ for Obama, hooked up with Shephard Fairey to come up with the famous poster.

With a degree from UCLA in World Arts and Culture, Sergant had an early career marked by a curious combination of working with both the former prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and controversial filmmaker Larry Clark. For six months he and the company he works for, Jennifer Gross’ Evolutionary Media Group, served as media consultants to the Obama campaign. But then he ran into street artist and guerrilla marketer Shepard Fairey at a party in February. Sergant engaged Fairey in a discussion about the upcoming election. And when he found out that the artist was an Obama enthusiast, Sergant asked Fairey if he was doing anything to help the candidate get elected. The next day Fairey called, wondering if he thought the Obama camp would mind if he made a poster. Sergant immediately realized the power an iconic image by Fairey could have and decided that he and Evolutionary Media Group could be more effective if they worked outside the confines of the official Obama campaign and teamed up with Fairey instead.

Since then, Fairey has printed and distributed some 250,000 “Hope” and “Progress” posters across America. The Obama campaign ended up commissioning Fairey to launch an Artists for Obama program with a run of 5,000 “Change” Obama posters. And Fairey, who reinvests all the proceeds in the HOPE media campaign, made the image file available for free downloads, so it’s impossible to say exactly how many reproductions of his work are currently out there.

Sergant also sparked 14 national Obama poster campaigns by artists, including Ron English’s “Abraham Obama” traveling mural. And, he created an Obama bicycle-spoke card with an image by artist Margaret Coble specifically for the Portland, Oregon, primaries. “Everyone [in Portland] rides a bike,” Sergant says. “It was a small investment, and it made an impact in the indie-hipster world, ending up in Paperand Bicycle magazines and on countless blogs, with no promotion.”

What happened next was the subject of the dispute between the AP and Fairey. Tech Crunch describes the tremendous damage Fairey did to the cause of Fair Use. The LA Times reports that Fairey’s lawyers are withdrawing from his case. He has simply made their position untenable.

His attorneys — led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — said that they would withdraw from the case and that the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.

It wouldn’t be the first good cause that the scammers have ruined. Conservationism, racial equality, concern for the poor, and an aversion to war were all good, rational causes. But once the scammers got a hold of them and hijacked them, they got turned into parodies of themselves. They have since mutated into Global Warming, the race card, welfare dependency and mindless appeasement. What we call “political correctness” is the collective name for the entire ideological clip joint of fake ideas.

In the comments section some posts back I argued that the media did no one any favors by going light on Barack Obama. If BHO turns out to be a huge, fraudulent castastrophe then real racists will attribute it to his being ‘black’. Even that is a form of lie. The fault, if anything, should be laid at the doorstep of the press and political process. They found a product they could sell and they sold it. There’s nothing worse than defending a good cause with a bad example. Fairey showed that whatever he might be, he was the worst poster boy possible for Fair Use. The problem with letting racists take the rebound is that it substitutes one form of lie for another; one narrative for another narrative. Politics is whipsawed from one direction to the other because that’s how the scammers make something from it. Truth is by definition relatively stable at least on the level of principles; indeed some are tempted to call it eternal. That would never do if media consultants and the shadier types of lawyers hoped to keep making a living. What would you pay a man who could change nothing? It’s only the people who can make facts blink like a Christmas tree light who can bill top dollar. So the first thing to sell, if the lying industry is to flourish, after which everything else is an add-on accessory is the basic proposition that the truth doesn’t exist. That it’s not independently discoverable. That it can be determined by authority yet not perceived by the common eye and ear. Then all “news” becomes equivalent to entertainment and all news comes from the badged broadcaster.

Screwtape told his nephew that the greatest trick the devil could pull was to convince the world he didn’t exist.

I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all he pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet. … I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.

Obey Giant.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:19 am 11. Jules Crittenden » LIED:

[...] Fernandez: Rip-off artist is a liar!?! [...]

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:24 am 12. Doug:

(from Wretchard’s links)

“The AP has succeeded in character assassination (perhaps rightfully so given Fairey’s actions), but Fairey may still have a case arguing that his image is protected under fair use.

Regardless of which photo he used, by painting the image and turning it into a national icon he may have transformed it enough to render the AP’s claims invalid.”

Laurence Pulgram, an intellectual property lawyer who represented the online music-sharing service Napster in a copyright fight with the band Metallica, said Saturday that Fairey’s case was in trouble.

“This was a brain-dead move by Mr. Fairey, and it could be the turning point. His lawyers will still be able to argue that he made a ‘fair use’ under copyright law, but it’s a whole lot less likely that the court or jury will think that what he did was actually ‘fair’ if he has lied and tried to mislead the entire world about what use he made,”
Pulgram said.
—
So some guy is a liar and a jerk:

What bearing does that have on fair use?
—
—
Haven’t read the law in a long time, but I recall it refering to how much the original is transformed and rendered non-infringing, being rendered unrecognizable.
(a machine-made painting is a rip-off of a photograph?)

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:31 am 13. Paul Milenkovic:

Why is this in the courts? Why cannot the two parties, like, share the profits like good Socialists and just settle this thing?

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:51 am 14. feeblemind:

Random thoughts: 1)Maybe I am stating the obvious here, but the delivery of the lie is essential to it’s believability as well. 2) I think one reason the red flag may be the ultimate protector of liars is because lying is such a fundamental weapon of the Left. 3) It is always interesting to watch The Liars call a liar out for lying.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:05 am 15. Doug:

“3) It is always interesting to watch The Liars call a liar out for lying.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:09 am 16. bogie wheel:

Doug -

I have to disagree with you on your comments in both 6 and 8.

Vallen has a partial point about Fairey’s apparent lack of any actual drawing skills. However, giving a nod to the age of digital illustration, one doesn’t need traditional manual drawing skills to do artistic graphics today. However, one does need advanced skills in graphics programs like Illustrator and Photoshop.

A master PS user will astound you with what he or she can build in terms of a composite image that does not look like a composite image. (A more appropriate term than “collage,” which references a particular art style with a particular look.) The best PS users will work in THOUSANDS of layers with that many or more applied steps (filters, edge work, contrast, color correction, etc.). A friend of mine took a PS seminar in which the instructor showed them an image he had built from hundreds of individual original elements; the PS file had 20,000 layers. It looked absolutely integrated, not PSed.

By contrast, the transformation of Obama’s image in Shephard Fairey’s poster is something that most likely took twenty steps or fewer in PS to accomplish. There is a filter that will do the red, white & blue coloring for you automatically, or any one of many other color combos. It’s not like Fairey sat down & meticulously used a tool to pick out the hair, ears & suit as one layer, then cut & pasted and filled them in blue; then repeated for the white & red & in-between layers, etc. The effect you see is 98% Photoshop, 2% Fairey’s pointing and clicking.

Fairey’s contribution is not technique or labor but concept, that of mimicking the Soviet poster.

Note, however, that in the pre-Adobe era, a person with a concept but lacking at least B-level artistic technique and labor would get nowhere unless they hired an artist with the necessary skills to execute the concept. With a computer, however, even a hack-level mediocrity can elevate himself to the level of a commercial success as a “street artist” by essentially ripping off the technique and labor of others … IF (back to Wretchard’s solid insight) he is saying the “right” things to the “right” people.

Fairey is much closer to PT Barnum than Andy Warhol. I’m not a Warhol fan but even his MM silk screen took considerable technique and labor at the time it was done. Today, it’s 3 minutes in Photoshop.

BTW, back on February 2009, Ray Pawulich on his blog pointed out that Shephard Fairey slapped fellow street artist Baxter Orr with a cease-and-desist order when Orr came up with a derivation of Fairey’s “Obey Giant” image. Orr put a surgical mask on the lower part of Andre’s face, and that was about it. The original image being black-and-white, Orr’s alteration would have taken mere minutes.

What Fairey does to others, he somehow does not like being done to him. Hmm. Imagine that.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:13 am 17. bogie wheel:

So some guy is a liar and a jerk:

What bearing does that have on fair use?

The bearing is possibly that Fairey knew that if he admitted upfront that he had used “Photo A” for the Obama poster rather than “Photo B,” as he decided to claim, that it would be screamingly obvious how little tranformation work he had actually done on the image.

IOW, it appears that Fairey was trying to cover up the (minimal) extent of his “contribution” because if people compared his work to the genuine source image they would likely conclude it was not fair use but a rip-off.

The cover-up indicates knowledge of wrongdoing. If he had genuinely believed he had legal grounds for fair use the first time around, then why the lies and falsifying of evidence?

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:23 am 18. Raoul Ortega:

Often I have had an aggressive young leftist attempt to end a debate by demanding the production of a citation on some point, as if we were engaged in some dissertation defense. By invalidating argument that hasn’t prepared reference to approved authority and preparing their own positions based on claims that are hard to verify or invalidate they avoid challenges to the overall message.

Given the recently exposed propensity for Leftists to make up their facts and quotes as needed when their targets refuse to provide them, your Leftist debater is the one who should be required to provide citations. We need to stop letting them get away with “their own reality” and make them live in the real world. Why should we believe anything they say any more?

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:36 am 19. Mean Old Man (Status = Grumpy):

At my job we have uncovered a chronic liar, and am yet unsure what to do with him (but is it not going to be pretty). He has an excuse for every action and inaction he does or does not take. The business partner has liked him and has been gullible to his lies for a long period of time.

But like the hand in the cookie jar, the amount of cookies continues to decrease until it is obvious something is afoot. This individual eventually stopped coming to work when the business partner was out of town..and eventually a huge ball was dropped on a simple task that could have tanked a critical deal.

When I intervened and alerted the business partner of the possible doom, I was the bad guy to the liar. It was not his consistant complete lack of responsibility to the company and subsequent risk he put us in that he realized, but instead that I needed to be “ripped a new one” for not covering for him. I am sure he has previously performed this ritual for those that work for and with him.

What this individual did not realize is that I was a partner in the business, he thought of me only as a peer. (I had not wanted to assert power – which may have been an error in this case). He was allowed to rant, and then when the ulitmate power call of “you can’t fire me” came out, the response from me was not what he expected.

Guess I just wanted to share this story because it is something going on in my life at this very moment, but I believe the desire to lie and the desire to believe a lie are both deeply embedded in human nature, and therefore commonly practiced in all aspects of life. Once you can get past not having a moral code, the world is yours for the taking.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:44 am 20. Rurik:

And it is the ombination of rules two and three which brings plausibility to the entire “birther” controversy. In this contest I will take no stance on the accuracy of the charges, but the enormity of running a fake president supported by photoshopped documents, becomes imaginable in view of rule two, and rule three about attacking critics also seems to be in play. Some of us sensed the essential phoniness of Warhol and Lichtenstein decades ago. I knew it would lead to trouble, even though I was unsure how, and never guessed the trouble could be political. JFSanders031 at #7, you are right. The Lie is like slime mold and spreads over everything. This is why The Other One, chooses as his epomym “Father of Lies”.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:46 am 21. Doug:

17. bogie
“The cover-up indicates knowledge of wrongdoing. If he had genuinely believed he had legal grounds for fair use the first time around, then why the lies and falsifying of evidence?”
—
Force of habit.
The man is a liar.

I would have acknowledged the photo that I photo-shopped/painted into a poster under fair use.

Seems to me the law stands apart from the individual.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:57 am 22. bogie wheel:

We need to stop letting them get away with “their own reality” and make them live in the real world. Why should we believe anything they say any more?

Good question, Raoul. Though I think it’s not so much that we “believe” what they say as what you expressed in the previous sentence — that we have been letting them get away with it for too long.

But to stop them from getting away with it, one must first be dealing with a vocabulary and worldview in which objective, absolute truth is acknowledged to exist.

Wretchard pointed out the problem:

So the first thing to sell, if the lying industry is to flourish, after which everything else is an add-on accessory is the basic proposition that the truth doesn’t exist. That it’s not independently discoverable. That it can be determined by authority yet not perceived by the common eye and ear. Then all “news” becomes equivalent to entertainment and all news comes from the badged broadcaster.

The problem is that the majority of Westerners no longer believe in the existence of absolute truth, and that that truth can be known. I heard recently that something like 90% or upwards of American college freshmen surveyed agree with the statement, “There is no such thing as absolute truth.” Because they have been (mis)taught to think that that assertion (rather than being what it is, a self-contradiction, a logical fallacy), is somehow the mark of a tolerant, sophisticated, open mind.

You can make the best, most factually grounded and rational argument since Socrates. But odds are your listener will just shrug in response and say, “Well, that’s YOUR opinion.” Or, if they are the one making the argument, you can lay down the simplest of challenges asking for how the facts support their conclusion. And you will be met with the response, “Well, it’s still true in essence.”

This attitude that reality is malleable and individual, rather than fixed and universal, is not just poison to public discourse and debate but, ultimately, suicidal. It’s like a version of the Darwin Awards, only on a cultural and national scale. Is the West, as currently composed, too stupid to survive?

What truth is, THAT truth is, is something that must be recovered if we are to have any hope of being around (other than in the form of the grunting sub-human yahoos of “Planet of the Apes”) a couple generations from now.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:00 am 23. Doug:

“By contrast, the transformation of Obama’s image in Shephard Fairey’s poster is something that most likely took twenty steps or fewer in PS to accomplish. There is a filter that will do the red, white & blue coloring for you automatically, or any one of many other color combos. It’s not like Fairey sat down & meticulously used a tool to pick out the hair, ears & suit as one layer, then cut & pasted and filled them in blue; then repeated for the white & red & in-between layers, etc. The effect you see is 98% Photoshop, 2% Fairey’s pointing and clicking.

Fairey’s contribution is not technique or labor but concept, that of mimicking the Soviet poster. ”
—
So that should be illegal?
(like eating a Whopper)

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:02 am 24. Joseph Cannon:

I’m not exactly Fairey’s biggest fan — in fact, I’ve been razzing him on my blog for some time now. (I also have some notoriety as an Obama critic.) But many people commenting on this situation know nothing about illustration.

Fairey’s Obama poster was not made mechanically. I know Photoshop at least as well as Fairey does, and I can find no way to make a proper recapitulation of the work simply by applying a set of filters to that photograph.

He did his own drawing, even though he used a photograph for reference. Before you pretend to find the use of photographic reference shocking, you should know that virtually every realistic illustration of a public figure done over the course of the past hundred-or-so years has relied photo reference.

(By the way: You cannot fairly claim Fairey’s use of photo reference equates to what Warhol did. Warhol, who really WAS a massive fraud, did not draw at all. He silk-screened photos taken by others.)

One of my art teachers was Nancy Ohanian, an award-winning illustrator for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section. She certainly knew how to draw a fine likeness from life; I’ve seen her do it. But she did her political drawings from photos, as her editors knew. I’m sure she would have liked to have someone like Henry Kissinger pose for her, but that was not possible.

Only a dolt would impugn the talent that went into her insanely detailed cross-hatched works. The basic contours are the least important aspect of such exquisite pen and ink work.

I give examples and further information in a piece written for my own blog:

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2009/10/art.html

Incidentally, the fellow who took the Obama photograph has testified that he never assigned the rights to AP. If that is true, then AP has lied in court filings.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:07 am 25. bogie wheel:

Force of habit.
The man is a liar.

Not the greatest legal defense.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client falsified evidence not because he wanted to cover-up wrongdoing, but because he is a pathological liar.”

I would have acknowledged the photo that I photo-shopped/painted into a poster under fair use.

Okay, at least then we could cut to the chase of a trial. And when the AP put on the stand a Photoshop user who, in a live demonstration on a screen projected for the whole courtroom to see, would proceed to change the source photo into your poster inside of three to four minutes, the jury could then decide whether it was “fair use” for you to collect big $$ on something which cost AP considerable time expense to generate but you just minutes to, err, appropriate.

I would not lay money on your success in the case.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:12 am 26. Doug:

The point is, photos of The One with chin raised, are not exactly unique.
Any of ten thousand pictures would have done as well.
…so where is the expropriation of some priceless value in that one AP Photo?
—
And,
now we have Joseph Cannon!

—
“Only a dolt would impugn the talent that went into her insanely detailed cross-hatched works.
The basic contours are the least important aspect of such exquisite pen and ink work.”

Amen!

—
“Incidentally, the fellow who took the Obama photograph has testified that he never assigned the rights to AP.
If that is true, then AP has lied in court filings.”
—
Liars calling out liars.
Again.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:36 am 27. Rurik:

10. wretchard

Even “PC” is not the real face of the beast. This technique goes to the heart of Leninist “morality” which asserts that the valence of any act, the truth of any proposition, depends on its expedience to the cause. But it traces back even further than Lenin. Traditionally revolutionaries would proclaim themselves and accept their own sacrifice for their cause when apprehended. But from the 1870s, a branch of Russian Populism began the practice of denying themselves when caught and performing any expediency. See Nechayev’s “Revolutionary Catechism”. I am not yet decided whether this corruption is structurally inherent in Marxist doctrine, though I think it is, or if Marxism was early infected and captured by it. Regardless, it is become inseperable from the Marxist outlook. Another name for this expedient amorality is Nihilism.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:37 am 28. Doug:

“He did his own drawing, even though he used a photograph for reference.
Before you pretend to find the use of photographic reference shocking, you should know that virtually every realistic illustration of a public figure done over the course of the past hundred-or-so years has relied photo reference.
—
One of my art teachers was Nancy Ohanian, an award-winning illustrator for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Opinion section.
She certainly knew how to draw a fine likeness from life; I’ve seen her do it. But she did her political drawings from photos, as her editors knew. I’m sure she would have liked to have someone like Henry Kissinger pose for her, but that was not possible.”

The real World.
Deal with it.
…or make up your own.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:49 am 29. Rurik:

12. Doug:

This is another example opf pure Leninist “morality”. the law applies when it is to my advantage, but not when it hinders me. Or as Lenin would put it – Kto – kogo? Who – whom?

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:52 am 30. bogie wheel:

So that should be illegal?

Doug, you are being uncharacteristically obtuse on this.

Do you believe in private property?

Do you believe that creative work is a form of private property?

Do you think it’s okay that Party A can expend a great deal of time, labor, and expense to generate a completely original Creative Work, only to have a hack with a modicum of skills and a computer do a few minutes’ change to that Creative Work, and then rake in considerable $$ off the alteration, without any license fee or other remuneration to Party A?

Let me state it again:

Note, however, that in the pre-Adobe era, a person with a concept but lacking at least B-level artistic technique and labor would get nowhere unless they hired an artist with the necessary skills to execute the concept.

Concept without execution remains an just an idea in a person’s head. In the past, one had to get a skilled craftsperson to execute the concept. Usually that involved some type of payment. The better the craftsperson, the more time and labor they had spent acquiring their skills, the better the execution would be, and the more one would pay that craftsman. Without the craftsman, the concept remains dormant, unrealized.

Shephard Fairey had a great concept with the Obama poster. What he did not demonstrate was the use of anything except a minimal amount of effort and Photoshopping skills.

Who, therefore, contributed the bulk of the “execution” work on the Obama poster? Answer: whoever created the source image.

For Fairey to be able to use what they created, and contribute very little in execution labor and skills himself, and to escape from sharing in profits he receives, is nothing but a modern, high-tech form of plagiarism. He is passing off something not substantially his work, as his work.

Concept without execution remains dormant. Fairey is not the chief executor on this work. AP and Mannie Garcia (or Garcia alone, if not licensed to AP) are.

No, having a great concept is not illegal. Profiting off someone else’s creative labor and execution, without compensating them in an agreed-upon amount, is illegal.

You are dancing around the edges on this issue, trying to avoid the questions of labor, skill, time & expense (as opposed to idea).

Those questions are at the heart of this case. How much is the image actually altered in Fairey’s poster? How much work did it take for Fairey to alter it … i.e. how much of a contribution did he make to the new image (the poster) versus what AP and Garcia contributed to creating the original image?

If “great idea” and “minimal work” is sufficient for 100% ownership of an alteration, then by that line of thinking, if I were to insert three pages of my own preface into a Harry Potter novel that changed, to some degree, the interpretation of that book, and that “new” work were to become a runaway best-seller due to the reinterpretation being extremely catchy, then I would legally be entitled to 100% of the profits of that “new” work. Nevermind that those three pages took me one day to compose and edit, and the original HP took a year or Rowling’s full-time labor and considerable time, expense, and labor on the part of her publisher. Nevermind that my contribution is three pages while Rowling’s is near 1,000. My great idea entitles me to 100% of the profits.

I realize that visual art is not as easily quantifiable in terms of content amount as text-based art (where you can do a word count, for example, to put things on a percentage basis). But quantity of original content, and quantity of alteration, is a huge part of Fair Use law in determining whether there has been a violation or not. With visual art, you have to come up with some measurement besides word count. A good idea would be to have professional visual artists advise on labor time and execution skill.

Mark Vallen did so. I have done so. (I have C-level PS skills myself, and I work with three graphic designers with considerably better skills than mine, probably B+ or A- level against all professional competition.)

A jury might ultimately side with Fairey, esp. if he had been straightforward from the get-go … but I’m telling you, as someone who works with professional graphics people, that what Fairey actually did to create his poster was minimal compared to what it took to generate the original image, and any professionals called to testify for the prosecution in this case would decimate Fairey’s case.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:59 am 31. Josh:

Fairey – who? Oh, the Obama poster? Is this seriously a question about the talent of the artist who did that?

It’s obviously derivative – and treacley. Competent.

I speak as someone with a few degrees of taste, and none at all of talent. I can do a little photoshopping and dada composition, loves me some bezier curves.

Commercial art is funny stuff, I respect the heck out of the people who do some very simple ads and packaging, but I never gave a moment’s thought to the degree of talent of the guy who did the Obama poster.

I rather like Joker Obama, tho.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:59 am 32. trangbang68:

Wow, the fraudulent poster that symbolized the media lying fraudulent campaign of a fraudulent man who hid his real intent to break the nation he fraudulently claims allegiance to. And they have the audacity to complain when folks photoshop their posters.
RWE’s line “lies suing the truth” is very powerful imagery. Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet described a time like ours as :Judgment is turned away backwards and justice stands afar off for truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:19 am 33. bogie wheel:

Shephard Fairey in HuffPo, 3/26/09:

I did not create the Obama poster for financial gain.

Note the careful wording. He’s not saying, “I did not financially gain from [creating] the Obama poster.” He’s only saying, indirectly, that financial gain was not his primary motive.

Laws for thee and not for me … one of the favorite claims of lefties.

I’m not a thief because my motives were ‘pure.’

Did Yosi Sergant’s Evolutionary Media Group pay anything to Fairey for creating the poster? When the Obama campaign commissioned Fairey for a 5,000 run of the CHANGE poster, did that commission involve money being sent to Fairey?

If “yes” to either, then he has profited from what he did.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:25 am 34. Doug:

“Do you think it’s okay that Party A can expend a great deal of time, labor, and expense to generate a completely original Creative Work, ”
—
Obtuse or not, I maintain that pictures of The One with chin (and nose) upturned are a dime a dozen.

…and as Mr. Cannon describes, photos are REGULARLY used for derivative works of art. (or schlock)

—
“Shephard Fairey in HuffPo, 3/26/09:

I did not create the Obama poster for financial gain.
”
—
(for the first time in my life)
I feel like a lawyer:

What does Mr. Fairey’s character have to do with the law?

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:26 am 35. Joseph Cannon:

“By contrast, the transformation of Obama’s image in Shephard Fairey’s poster is something that most likely took twenty steps or fewer in PS to accomplish. There is a filter that will do the red, white & blue coloring for you automatically, or any one of many other color combos. It’s not like Fairey sat down & meticulously used a tool to pick out the hair, ears & suit as one layer, then cut & pasted and filled them in blue; then repeated for the white & red & in-between layers, etc. The effect you see is 98% Photoshop, 2% Fairey’s pointing and clicking.”

Nonsense.

Let’s have no more talk along these lines from people who have no actual experience with the program, or with the creation of commercial illustration. Honestly, I wish that people who have never held a brush in their hands (or, in this case, have never done high-level Photoshop work) would simply STFU about art.

And that goes DOUBLE for professional art critics, most of whom are utter poseurs.

You can’t make a new version of the Obama poster through a mechanical or automatic process. The thing does not happen in just a few minutes. I know. I’ve tried. I’ve even been paid to “do up a Fairey” back at the ad agency I used to work for. (Tha image was kind of a gag.)

First and foremost, the image has to be broken down into discrete areas for each gradation — that is, for the dark shaded areas colored dark blue in the poster, for the less shadowy areas colored red, and so forth. Now, you can attempt to do this automatically using the image/adjustment/posterize function or the filter/artistic/cutout function. But the results look like CRAP. Try it, as I did: If you manipulate the “AP” photo in this way, the result will look nothing like the Fairey.

After I ran the thing through the filter, the edges are wobbly, and the contours are not outlined. The whole thing looks completely different, no matter how you adjust the sliders.

I know at least as much about Photoshop as Fairey does, and I can’t think of a way to generate such an image automatically. Especially not the curved hatch marks on the right side of the forehead or the horizontal stripe pattern in the very light blue areas

So how did Fairey do it?

He drew the thing, by hand, based on a photographic reference. He may have drawn it on paper, or he may have done a job of hand-vectoring.

To which I say: Big effing deal.

NEARLY EVERY REALISTIC POLITICAL ILLUSTRATION YOU’VE EVER SEEN WAS DONE EXACTLY THE SAME WAY.

There are lots of realistic illustrations of famous people on the net. I defy you to show me one that was NOT based on photo ref.

(Please note the word “realistic.” I’m not talking about cartoonish, abstracted or wildly expressionistic pieces. I’m also not talking about “official” portraits for which the subject actually sat.)

I’m trying to hold my temper, but I’m going to allow one small explosion. The following comment is meant generally — I’m not just talking about Fairey (whose work, incidentally, I don’t much like):

UNLESS YOU CAN DRAW, SHUT UP ABOUT ART. DO NOT OPINE ABOUT HOW THE STUFF IS MADE. DO NOT OPINE ABOUT WHICH TECHNIQUES ARE FAIR AND WHICH ARE NOT. JUST SHUT UP. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. YOU DON’T HAVE ANY RIGHT TO AN OPINION. JUST SHUT UP!

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:38 am 36. steveaz:

Richard wrote:

“That way even those who know he is lying will think he is lying in a “good” cause. If the last refuge of scoundrels is the flag, the ultimate protective banner is the Red Flag.”

This post touches on a local issue that is dear to me, Richard. It involves a similar dynamic, wherein arsonists are not only rewarded for starting their fires, but they get accolades for putting them out, too.

Northern Arizona has experienced a very dry summer this year, and it follows on a remarkably wet Spring. The result is a lot of under-story tinder has accumulated, and this has compounded the region’s historic forest management technique of suppressing natural wild fires (folks in Australia, California, Oregon and Washington will probably recognize this same situation).

Well, despite high-wind warnings predicting SW winds of speeds in excess of 55 miles per hour and concomitant humidities below 12 percent issuing from one federal agency a good week in advance of the weather change, another federal agency, the US Forest Service, decided to ignite a “controlled burn” just below and to the South of one of the region’s population centers on exactly the same day that the winds were predicted to pick up. You can guess at the results: an out of control forest fire licking at the town of Williams’ southern limits, ash settling in gardens 20 miles to the north, and dense choking smoke reducing visibility along a major interstate for tens of miles to the East and West.

Like Fairey’s “big lie,” the rationale for setting the fires in the first place fits the left’s leit-motif of “government management,” but other similarities are evident, too. The week before, not uncoincidentally, a county meeting stacked with state and park employees pushed for the creation of a new, tax-payer funded fire district for the region, a motion that was resoundingly criticized by the few property owners and net tax-payers that dared to stand and speak. Also, hundreds of thousands of dollars of state and federal revenues were billed by FS, and fire-jumper crews and accessory vendors (like crew-haulers, helicopter spotters, etc) to start, track and fight the inferno. And, if that’s not enough, the local paper (what I call a “Liberal Rag”) lauded the “brave men and women” who fought and finally brought the fire “under control.”

In the end, what really put the fire out was a wet low-pressure system and the cold, windless drizzle that it brought to the region. In Obama’s America, we’re peering through a slurry of manufactured crises, borne forward on a million “big lies,” and we’re expected to cheer the arsonists as they put out their own ignited fires. One hope I hold is that our own societal “low pressure-system” might save the day – I”m not sure what form it will take, but, here’s hopin’.
-Steve

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:38 am 37. Doug:

IOW:
Regardless of what becomes of Mr. Fairey,
why should this case have any effect on fair use?

—
Once again, Mr. Cannon gives tether to the Real World:

“NEARLY EVERY REALISTIC POLITICAL ILLUSTRATION YOU’VE EVER SEEN WAS DONE EXACTLY THE SAME WAY.

There are lots of realistic illustrations of famous people on the net. I defy you to show me one that was NOT based on photo ref“

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:39 am 38. Joseph Cannon:

Within a few minutes, I will have an updated version of my post which will illustrate the point which I angrily made above. You simply cannot create the Fairey image through the adjustment of filters.

“It’s not like Fairey sat down & meticulously used a tool to pick out the hair, ears & suit as one layer, then cut & pasted and filled them in blue; then repeated for the white & red & in-between layers, etc.”

Yes, he did exactly that.

And if you think it can be done more simply — put up or shut up, bogie. Fire up PShop and tell us precisely what steps you used. Go on: Educate us all.

And if you don’t know how to use the program — if you are going on hearsay — SHUT UP.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:46 am 39. Doug:

“…you can attempt to do this automatically using the image/adjustment/posterize function or the filter/artistic/cutout function.
But the results look like CRAP.
Try it, as I did: If you manipulate the “AP” photo in this way, the result will look nothing like the Fairey.”
—

I just blame Photoshop.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:53 am 40. erc rodson:

Mr Cannon (#35):

Thank you for addressing the factual basis of the poster. I truly cannot draw a line freehand and have it look anything like what I intended. It was a revelation to me when I was introduced to mechanical drawing, a totally different skill and not art but craft. I have produced pretty fair architectural and structural plans of many flavors for many years, but still can’t draw anything freehand. And, since I can’t, I have considerable respect for those who can and even more for those who can forensically determine how the work was done.

It continues to amaze me all the interlocking but separately defined areas of expertise that exist in our modern world. I have almost always found that people who are good at actually doing something are are also good at describing their area of expertise, even if it is nothing I would want to do myself.

Fairey is a jerk, AP is despicable, but you have given us an insight into the underlying facts of the case.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:10 am 41. herb:

Things are spinning out of control. Now Fairey is ripped off.

I just cant keep up.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:13 am 42. Tinian:

“According to this theory, a salesman selling you survival equipment can exaggerate the frequency of possible threats to his advantage, but must never say ‘the sky is falling’. Because if it doesn’t fall on the morrow, then no one will listen to him any more.”

That hasn’t stopped the global warming scammers.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:20 am 43. Doug:

“It continues to amaze me all the interlocking but separately defined areas of expertise that exist in our modern world.”

“I was introduced to mechanical drawing, a totally different skill and not art but craft
—
There were guys (and odd girls) that could do mechanical drawing excercises with ease. (they became engineers)
I was a putz.

They were not particularly verbal,

I woulda been Joyce if only…
…but I love manipulating pixels in Photoshop.

Go figure.

Herb:
It’s a derivative work.
Go with the flow.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:21 am 44. RWE:

Trangbang 32:

It is interesting to see how often now lawsuits are used in an attempt to assert the truth rather than discover it. The mere fact of the lawsuit is supposed to add gravitas to the lies. As Rush Limbaugh puts it “The seriousness of the charges outweighs the lack of evidence.”

The Tawana Brownley hoax created by Al Sharpton was like this; that the girl was supposedly not only raped and smeared with feces but that it allegedly was done by well-known white officials made the charges more worthy of investigation, not less so.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:26 am 45. NahnCee:

It seems to me that using nothing but Photoshop and technology can be every bit as creative as hand-painting the Sistine Chapel. Is the poster of Obama painted in like the Joker a rip-off or is it a perceptive nod to a previously-unnoticed reality?

I think, too, there’s another dodge when someone is caught lying and/or stealing. You merely mention the words “paying homage”. You see a lot of homage-paying in fashion because the human form has been pretty consistent for a very very long time, so it’s a safe bet that any ruffle, furbelow, tuck or bustle has already been done at some past point along the line. Unless you use exactly the same material in exactly the same way, then you are not ripping off, but are “paying homage” in the most respectful (and expensive) of ways.

///

Grumpy Old Man – you go, dude. Torment him good for all us worker bees who are actually at our desks doing our jobs and covering for ineffectual bullies like you’re dealing with. I’m still cheerfully awaiting karmic retribution for my own boss’s daughter (more, of course, than I was able to exact on my own).

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:29 am 46. steveaz:

Joseph wrote:

“Shut Up!”

A titanic intellect sporting a technocratic credential stifling earnest speech? I sure hope not.

As I recall, it was a lowly midshipman who warned the Titanic’s Captain about the threat of collision well in advance of the ship’s fateful hit. Take note, Sir.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:30 am 47. Tinian:

@Cannon:

I don’t understand your fixation with filters. I’d make a gray scale image, adjusting the number of grays to isolate various parts of the image. You then assign each area the color/pattern of your choice. It’s a terribly easy thing to do. I’m sure there was some final hands on touching up to produce the final image but 95% of it could be produced on a computer without using a single filter.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:43 am 48. rickl:

I made this Fairey-ized image of my cat awhile ago. I actually used Adobe Illustrator rather than Photoshop. I’m slightly more competent with Illustrator. The autotrace feature was a big help, but it took me more than a few minutes to do. I don’t call myself an artist, though. I can see that Fairey’s poster uses more subtle shading and, dare I say, nuance than mine. On the other hand, Leo was a totally black cat, so there wasn’t much leeway to put more detail in my image.

I got my inspiration to make that from the People’s Cube deck of cards. Now Comrade Red Square is a real artist. He used to do stuff like that back in the Soviet Union.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:48 am 49. Chiral:

I think Balloon Dad knew the 4 rules, although he is almost psycho enough to believe his own lies.

And there are social penalties for fraud – it’s just convenient to live within a cult that shields you from shame.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:51 am 50. rickl:

35. Joseph Cannon:
Now, you can attempt to do this automatically using the image/adjustment/posterize function or the filter/artistic/cutout function. But the results look like CRAP. Try it, as I did: If you manipulate the “AP” photo in this way, the result will look nothing like the Fairey.

That reminds me of an Art History course I took in college (closest I ever got to an actual Art course). We were covering Jackson Pollock and the teacher told us of the time when she was a student and was convinced that she could do the same thing herself. She put a large canvas in an empty room, collected buckets of paint, put on coveralls, and proceeded to start slinging paint. She said the results looked nothing like Pollock and she was properly chastened.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:02 am 51. JFSanders031:

Mr. Cannon. “You can’t make a new version of the Obama poster through a mechanical or automatic process. The thing does not happen in just a few minutes“.

Submitted for your perusal.
Obamicon.Me

DOH!

Created by me in less than 5 minutes using Fairey’s supposed technique. So I would politely suggest that Mr. Cannon STFU

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:15 am 52. JFSanders031:

Thought better of it.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:19 am 53. rickl:

52. JFSanders031:

I believe she actually said “it was a mess”.

I tried the Obamicon site with the same picture of my cat. I like the one I made better.

FWIW. I’m not an artist, or even an art connoisseur.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:26 am 54. JFSanders031:

rickl, I went and reread what I had written and edited. Not my intention to poke you in the eye. Sorry.

As for the Obamicon site. Did you adjust the sliders for the color?

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:41 am 55. bogie wheel:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

For what it’s worth, which may not be much, here is my imitation of the Shephard Fairey poster.

I did this just now on Photoshop 7 in about 40 minutes. And I’m not that good at PS. I work with professional graphic designers who can run circles around me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43729545@N06/4022547597/

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:43 am 56. bogie wheel:

P.S. If anyone thinks I’m an exceptional undiscovered graphics talent, and you happen to be independently wealthy and/or a fantastically flush entrepreneur needing an in-house arteest … I am open to negotiation!

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:45 am 57. rickl:

54. JFSanders031:

No problem. No offense taken.

I don’t remember about the sliders. That was maybe a year or more ago when I tried it. Someone turned me on to that site after I showed them my own image.

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:51 am 58. herb:

Doug: I could argue its new Art. Who’d have thought of putting Baraq’s image up with Che’s? Arent they totally different?

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:00 pm 59. Charles:

I recall in film class by Andrew Sarris during my
NYC days that he said typically its a bad idea to portray boredom by being boring, or evil by being evil. At every turn an artist needs to consider the appropriate distance from his work.

On first impression, shephard fairey portrays totalitarian by being totalitarian. He doesn’t make the sorts of pictures you’d want to have on your wall even in jest.

Consider the first picture in the link that wretchard provides. A quick glance at the face you look at reminds me of Agent Smith in the Matrix.

But in that case there is all kinds of separation between the director and Agent Smith and the viewer and agent smith and the viewer and the director. (as there is between wretchard and the pic.)

Here’s a quick search of Matrix christian symbolism

Here’s a utube discussion of matix christian symbolism

The guy in the utube discussion says
“I believe Agent Smith and his clones represent sin.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:11 pm 60. Mark:

So what is truth? In everyday, practical, pay-the-bills life, it’s value. You count on things having a certain value. You need a medium of exchange. (In private life one may have faith, or philosophical training, or training in depth psychology. But that is a private matter, even though the aggregate is a public matter.)

So if you really want to introduce utter confusion into a political entity, how would you do it? You weaken the value of the currency, so that it no longer is anything other than another lie, another unstable contestation of value and values. Thirteen trillion dollars evaporated in the recent meltdown (New Yorker, Oct. 12)? Ideally we would get back on a sane fiscal path. But Obama does not even seem to be making a nod that way. When he does, watch out.

I suspect we’ll see a new Fairey poster: “Prosperity.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:11 pm 61. Pharmaguy:

I first became aware of Fairey’s work from this project that I believe he started during his days at Rhode Island School of Design. Not sure of the dates; probably early 90s. You can still see the odd “Obey” sticker in RI at a bar, etc.

Art is what you make of it, but given the times and Fairey’s political leanings, there was no doubt a swipe at Reagan or Bush 41 in there somewhere, maybe even GWB if my dates are too early. This flirting with facism/communism/Big Brother images goes back some with Mr. Fairey…

See here for the “Obey” poster project
http://obeygiant.com/

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:18 pm 62. Pharmaguy:

Enough talk, time for action:

A Challenge to all the Belmont Club posters:

Let’s see who can use Photoshop or some similar software and make a “Hope” like poster of our Host (new or old picture) and describe the steps. We’ll vote on the best poster/fewest steps. A whopping three figure donation to the tip jar in the name of the winner. RF gets the rights to the poster. In place of the legend Hope, it’s open to the artist. Might I suggest “Faith” or “Steady” or “Steel” or some attribute of our host that we all admire.

All contingent of the approval of our Host of course. Fire up those programs. Contest ends in 2 weeks. Get to it.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:39 pm 63. whiskey:

Sergant also sparked 14 national Obama poster campaigns by artists, including Ron English’s “Abraham Obama” traveling mural. And, he created an Obama bicycle-spoke card with an image by artist Margaret Coble specifically for the Portland, Oregon, primaries. “Everyone [in Portland] rides a bike,” Sergant says. “It was a small investment, and it made an impact in the indie-hipster world, ending up in Paperand Bicycle magazines and on countless blogs, with no promotion.”

What is the indie-hipster world, and why is it a source of power (as opposed to middle class people with families and homes)?

I would suggest that this is the symptom of a young cohort without any aspirations to family formation, trapped in eternal adolescence, where a Yosi Sergant is not a joke but someone who is respected. If you want to know why a go-for-broke con man can succeed, look no further than desperate to stay 22 folks in their thirties riding bikes in hipster Portland. You also see the War on the middle class that is being waged by the Yosi Sergants and Shepard Faireys in alliance with the Rev. Wrights and Obamas.

As for “racism” I no longer have any idea of what that is. A nearly all-Black jury acquits OJ to enable him to get away with murdering two White people is not racism but an all-White jury doing nearly the same (hung jury) to Byron De La Beckwith, murderer of Medgar Evers, is racism. A White boy gets on a bus and is beaten to the hoots and hollers and laughter of Black girls and boys, for the “crime” of sitting next to a Black boy, and that is not racism. Rosa Parks being arrested for not moving to the back of the bus is, however. Emmet Till being murdered for looking appreciatively at a White woman is racism, a White Polish immigrant and Marine Sergeant at Camp Pendleton being murdered by his four Black privates for the “crime” of marrying a Black woman is not racism. Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Henry Louis Gates are not racists, but Rush Limbaugh (for accurately saying that the Press and NFL are going easy on McNabb to create the “great Black QB”) is a racist. It is racist to point out ACORN is a corrupt organization willing to help pimps and prostitutes engage in human sex trafficking of underage girls. It is racist to engage in Tea Parties, or criticize the First Black President, ever, in any way. Tookie Williams and Mumia’s murders of White and Asian people were not racist hate crimes, but George Bush “hates Black people.” Donovan McNabb several years ago suggested that he alone got criticism (this when Rex Grossman and Eli Manning were under constant fire) because of “racism.” The murders of Newsome and Christian in Knoxville by Black assailants is not a hate crime or racism, but opposition to ObamaCare is (according to Maxine Waters).

Racism is now meaningless as the Holy Roman Empire. What matters is whose side people and institutions are on? Will money flow to the alliance of the very rich middle-men hucksters-hipsters like Fairey and Sergant combined with race-hustlers like Obama, Sharpton, and Farrakhan, or the White Middle Class. There is no getting around it — this is a naked spoils battle of winner take all, loser gets destroyed, and there is no “middle ground” nor compromise based on shared values and color-blind/class-blind identities. The Flag, National Anthem, and America means nothing to Obama, Neal Gabler, and Rev. Wright. They’ve said so many times. There is no point in unity, and America has reached that naked, spoils politics moments.

I don’t see Milosevic violence, but clearly the political process can no longer sustain the “pretty lie” that we are all in this together, because clearly we are not. White middle class people cannot change their skin to become Black (or Hispanic) nor can they become Yosi Sergant or Shepard Fairey, Portland living, bike riding hipsters without family concerns or mortgages. They have nothing else but the fight within politics for naked Jacksonian spoils politics without the restrictions of “racism” which means basically that your opponent is either Farrakhan or Fairey.

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:41 pm 64. Subotai Bahadur:

A few thoughts after going through the thread to now. [#29]

#5 hdgreene lays out the role of the state controlled media with some precision and exactitude, and that should be combined with Rurik’s following explanation of “revolutionary morality”. It is their job to take the perception of events and mold them into something that fits what we have been calling the Narrative; more accurately perhaps it can be called the needs of the State and those who control it. Once you view what was called the Main Stream Media [and which I refer to as the state-controlled media, for they consider their highest priorities to be concealing anything that makes the regime look bad, and attacking anyone who does not submit to the regime] from the point of view of knowing its actual function; it is reflexive for anyone to try to figure out the truth, if they are at heart a free person.

Yes, an industry has arisen [not yet suppressed by the regime, but they have hopes] to help with that decoding; but it has grown from a basic human instinct in anyone who has not been enslaved. Even in this forum, and in the many lesser ones that we are involved in, we make a point of trying to find out the truth behind what the media reveals about the state.

We are acting in the same tradition as the Kremlinologists who tried to tease meaning out of Soviet publications. And indeed that tradition goes farther back and is far more widespread. In Napoleonic France, the saying for something being fantasy was “to lie like a Bulletin” referring to Napoleon’s published statements. In Nazi Germany, any free-minded people knew that the Völkischer Beobachter only “observed” what the State wanted seen, and the relatively new technology of home short wave radios became their access to a closer approximation of the truth. The ability to have alternate sources of information is anathema to any totalitarian state, and possession of short wave sets that could tune into any but the state stations became a major crime. I have to comment that the internet and forums like this are just as much anathema to this regime, and they have their own desires in the matter.

In Soviet Russia, it was a saying that “there is no ‘Truth’ in Pravda, and there is no ‘News’ in Izvestia“. And amongst those who were not drinkers of “Kremlin Kool-Aid”, they created newsletters called Samizdat, hand typed on illegally owned unregistered typewriters on onionskin paper, and secretly passed hand to hand. Possession of which meant contact with the Committee for State Security.

The encoding metaphor is exact. The act of encoding, implies that data is being concealed from a wider audience. Otherwise there is no reason for it. That data, facts that are inconvenient to those on whose behalf the encoding is done, can be considered an “inconvenient truth” that they would conceal. Who are they concealing it from? Would it be us? [Basic rule of survival. If you find yourself in a rigged game, and cannot look around and pick out who the mark is, it's you.]

Rurik correctly points out that the data about the past of the regime’s ‘Lightbringer’ is thoroughly encoded and concealed, and they change the codes frequently. The act of deliberate encoding, implies that the data would be dangerous if released. The level of effort in maintaining the encoding indicates the level of danger. Basic traffic analysis.

Long ago, months before the beginning of Year One of Anno Obama I offered an analysis of the Obama birth certificate controversy from an investigator’s point of view. It was quite clear that there was something of great import being concealed. The two photoshopped fakes posted by Obama’s people are additional levels of encoding. The carefully weasel-worded statement offered by the Hawaiian government official, that he had personally seen the Long Form Birth Certificate in the Archives, and that it existed; yet not making any direct statement that it showed that he was born in Hawaii [which being something that Obama publicly claimed would not be any violation of privacy] only shows that they claim that they have it. More encoding. If the regime ever loosens its grip on the country, it would be a good thing for investigators to hie themselves to the Hawaiian Birth Certificate Archives, and declare it a crime scene while they determine if a) a Long Form certificate was ever issued, b) if it still exists, c) what said certificate says if it still exists, d) if it exists, has it been altered, e) if it no longer exists, when was it destroyed and under what circumstances? Similar activities may be productive in relation to other documentation that is concealed. I assume that there will be those willing to assign culpability to individual actions if any alteration, destruction, or deliberate concealment of material facts is discovered.

And that point is one of many where we will run into problems of definition. Just as Shepard Fairey is likely to be given a pass because any intellectual property theft would have been in the service of a higher cause [electing the Lightbringer], those involved in the encoding process at all levels will consider themselves above the material facts or any law because of their ‘higher purpose’. [I do note that if the real author of the poster did not, as he claims, sign over the rights to AP, AP is scrod. If AP has a signature, assuming that the law is followed, Fairey is scrod.]

The Nihilism noted by Rurik has infected the Left, and all those I have referred to as TWANLOC. Their perception of reality differs from us in almost all particulars. And if reality [in our terms] threatens to intrude, they will change their definitions of reality to avoid such contact and suffer no cognitive dissonance. Because they do not share our conceptions of right and wrong or reality within their culture(s). Their political actions derive from their culture.

Rational discourse, meaningful negotiations, a shared polity can only exist between cultures if they share an agreed and fixed basis of the meaning of words and the nature of reality. There is a “degree of alien-ness” that BOTH must overcome.

The Left’s public discourse on “Diversity” and “Multi-culturalism” is a papering over of those very real differences by pretending they do not exist. True appreciation of both comes from an understanding of those differences, and a mutually successful effort to translate them so that they are understood. Agreement may not be reached, but such disagreements as happen will at least be based on something other than illusion.

The next few sentences in this paragraph are going to be carefully phrased so as not to impose on Wretchard’s tolerance in this, his house. It has been commented that I am wasting my time in responding to Marie Claude. I admit, that sometimes my responses are triggered by being [several crude Chinese expletives deleted here] “hacked off” at what her statements imply, and their conflict with our concept of reality. And you know what? I accept that her reactions to our writings are sometimes similar, albeit the expletives are European in origin [she seems to have some knowledge of a couple of languages], for the same reasons.

We are no longer related to Europeans as we once were, and I suspect that the political differences in part reflect the cultural differences. Consider, we parted ways politically 233 years ago, but the culture started evolving differently almost as soon as English colonies settled in the 1600’s. From the moment of political parting, we literally turned our backs on each other. We were occupied with our own matters of expansion and internecine differences. Europe was involved in the fall of the ancien regime and the resulting series of wars. We evolved in totally different directions with minimal cultural cross contact.

Our country continued its split along the lines of the English Civil War, with our own [note that the Northern Colonies were largely settled by the Roundheads and their Protestant allies. The South was settled by Royalists and Celts. Look at the derivation of the names of the southern colonies.].

Europe evolved differently from us in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the reimposition of the dynasties after the Congress of Vienna. But there was another split in European culture with the rise of Socialism as a political force and Communism [the Communist Manifesto being published not long before the wave of European uprisings starting in 1848]. The uprisings were suppressed, but Socialism in various forms became a mainstream political force.

The United States reinvolved itself peripherally with Europe during the Spanish American War, and more strongly with WW I. But our experiences of that war were vastly different. In the aftermath of WW I we had boom and then the Depression. Europe missed the boom, got the Depression, and they had a very physical risk of losing Europe to the new Soviet Union and its puppet movements. Most Americans do not know that the Soviet Army was stopped at the gates of Warsaw in the 1920’s, or that in the same decade a Communist uprising in Germany tried to take the country, and had to be put down by private right wing armies [Freikorps] because the government was not strong enough to do it. Thus the rise of the Fascist and Nazi movements with the need to combat Communism as a public excuse. Then WW II which had totally different experiences for both, followed by the Cold War. And through it all, the Socialist Left grew in influence and control of government policies Europe-wide.

I count at least 7 [depends on where you draw the lines] major branches in cultural and political evolution between us and Europe. There is a large degree of alien-ness between us and them, and words do not mean the same things to us, even beyond linguistic differences, and the ‘logical’ patterns of the Left are far more prevalent in Europe than here [not for lack of trying by TWANLOC, and they are not done].

So in addition to venting spleen, I sometimes converse with Marie Claude for other reasons. Sometimes to avoid her assertions going unanswered, sometimes to explore the degree of alien-ness between our two Weltanschauungen, and sometimes to allow her to lay out her views so that others at BC can seen just how …. far off … they are from what we consider to be reality.

We really do not relate to Europe any more, nor can they be considered friends and allies at the national and soon-to-be supranational level. Individual Europeans may be able to bridge the gap, as may individual Americans. But our cultures, interests, desires, and goals are so far apart that there is no longer the ability to speak or negotiate without resorting to the mutual re-definition of terms first. Given the lack of common bonds between us, in the dog-eat-dog world we have to consider them as a threat if not an outright adversary since their goals and ours [our nation's not our regime's] are usually diametrically opposed.

I will close with this. Despite the Lightbringer declaring that we are ‘one of the largest Muslim nations’; we really are not. Even the politicians who claim that they understand Islam because they have read the Koran ‘from front to back’ are scamming. The Koran is not arranged in a chronological narrative order, but rather with the shortest “books” at the beginning moving to the longest at the end.

We cannot now easily understand the Europe our ancestral culture and society once originated from. How [Basque expletive deleted here] are we to understand and reach a peaceful modus vivendi with a culture and society that shares nothing with our culture save vaguely at thousands of years remove with ours, whose driving force is the demand for our destruction because we are not exactly like them, and whose culture and language goes far beyond the Leftist denial of facts in a discussion and enshrines lying to us as a mandatory religious duty [Taqiyya]?

Subotai Bahadur

Oct 18, 2009 - 12:51 pm 65. RWE:

Mark #59:

Yes, you’ve got it. What I have seen is that the Left makes a big noise about every Valerie Plame, Dubai Ports Deal, U.S Attorneys Firing, Weapons for Iraq, Weapons for Iran, Weapons for Osama, Bitberg Ceremony (remember that one?) in order to devalue the very concepts of honesty, truth, and looking out for the nation’s real interests.

They depend on people going to sleep, hearing the noise and thinking “Well, the politicians are all crooks, so what does it matter who we elect.” They trade a Plamegate for a congressman with cash in the freezer or a secret house in the Bahamas, a Bush DWI for a Chappaquitick, a Reagan not being able to recall some details for a Hillary “My mind is a complete blank on the Rose Law Firm case.”

They seek to increase cynicism and distrust in the government and our society for their own ends. Hope means “Hope you don’t recall.” Change means “Change the facts of history.”

Their long term approach to getting caught is to be able to say “Hey, everybody’s doing it.”

This is not just lying; this is lying to destroy the very concept of truth.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:06 pm 66. Wadeusaf:

Hey its all phenomenological remember?

The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as “the process of letting things manifest themselves.” Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation.

The FIRST AIM OF PHENOMENOLOGY is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment. The OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the product or motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with the sticker provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception and attention to detail. The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker. Because OBEY has no actual meaning, the various reactions and interpretations of those who view it reflect their personality and the nature of their sensibilities.

Many people who are familiar with the sticker find the image itself amusing, recognizing it as nonsensical, and are able to derive straightforward visual pleasure without burdening themselves with an explanation. The PARANOID OR CONSERVATIVE VIEWER however may be confused by the sticker’s persistent presence and condemn it as an underground cult with subversive intentions. Many stickers have been peeled down by people who were annoyed by them, considering them an eye sore and an act of petty vandalism, which is ironic considering the number of commercial graphic images everyone in American society is assaulted with daily.

Another phenomenon the sticker has brought to light is the trendy and CONSPICUOUSLY CONSUMPTIVE nature of many members of society. For those who have been surrounded by the sticker, its familiarity and cultural resonance is comforting and owning a sticker provides a souvenir or keepsake, a memento. People have often demanded the sticker merely because they have seen it everywhere and possessing a sticker provides a sense of belonging. The Giant sticker seems mostly to be embraced by those who are (or at least want to seem to be) rebellious. Even though these people may not know the meaning of the sticker, they enjoy its slightly disruptive underground quality and wish to contribute to the furthering of its humorous and absurd presence which seems to somehow be antiestablishment/societal convention. Giant stickers are both embraced and rejected, the reason behind which, upon examination reflects the psyche of the viewer. Whether the reaction be positive or negative, the stickers existence is worthy as long as it causes people to consider the details and meanings of their surroundings. In the name of fun and observation.

Shepard Fairey, 1990

Well there it is again, the Giant Hope/obey cult of the Obama presidency which only seeks to have people consider the meanings of their surroundings in the name of fun. president Obama has no meaning in and of himself, much less the idea of any hope whatsoever attached to his candidacy and oh wait he got elected…

May I suggest the posted be altered for copyright purposes and the letters O-H S-H-I-T be inserted in the place of the HOPE or OBEY label. Or for those who object to the reference to a previous post perhaps H-E-L-P or H_O_A_X would be an acceptable alternative with appropriate symbols.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:08 pm 67. wretchard:

It is hard to make an exact copy of anything using anything short of one-for-one correspondence methods. Even if you merely inspect a piece of code and try to check it into Visual Sourcesafe or CVS, you’ll often find you may have accidentally modified some files. A white space here, and paragraph return there will have crept into the document. A new piece of creative material always has two attributes: the previous version and the diff or delta; that is to say the original and the contribution. And that may include replacements, additions and deletes. You can modify a work by removing stuff. In Fairey’s case, there will almost certainly be a resulting diff consequent to his efforts or even a mere attempt to copy; the problem is with the acknowledgment of the previous version.

Originally Open Source BSD licensing “required authors of all works deriving from a BSD-licensed work to include an acknowledgment of the original source.” Then you could add your own stuff and those who subsequently added to code base had to acknowledge you. This eventually resulted in acknowledgments of cumbersome length. In general there are a whole bunch of licensing schemes out there, some more or less appropriate to different situations.

There’s also a concept called “copyleft”, which may have at least moral application in this case. It gave “every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute the work as long as any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same copyleft licensing scheme”. Fairey ought to agree to be paid back in his own coin. If one were to make a slightly different version of his own hit poster and distribute it widely — would he object? Would he object if he were not acknowledged or the wrong work is acknowledged?

A lawyer once told me that real protection ultimately depended on getting to market faster than the competitor. You had to “get away with it” in the real world. Leaving things to the majesty of the law was a bad strategy. There were too many jurisdictions in the world to enforce copyright in all of them. In other words, there’s really no rigorous logical way to decide who “intellectual property” belongs to that you could easily appeal to in court. I know some third world activists who actually claim that it is morally good to copy Western works, the better to destroy them. People are people. But the same rough and ready test may also work against Fairey. His poster “looks like” the AP photo, and he didn’t acknowledge it. There may actually be thousands of differences between Fairey’s poster and the AP photo, but the mind discards subtle changes because it can smooth out differences and say “this is the same work” at a high level. It’s duck typing. If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

In computer programming with object-oriented programming languages, duck typing is a style of dynamic typing in which an object’s current set of methods and properties determines the valid semantics, rather than its inheritance from a particular class or implementation of a specific interface. The name of the concept refers to the duck test, attributed to James Whitcomb Riley (see History below), which may be phrased as follows: “when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

Now if a conservative had said that about politics, there would be hell to pay. Fairey sought fortune in men’s eyes. He must either seek his solace again there or accept their judgment. Human judgment is often inconsistent and Fairey didn’t help his case by lying — or does that word have meaning any more?. In my own view matters like this are always going to be a question of degree; or diff in the check in to the great body of human sourcecode, the universal knowledge base. But using Ward Churchill or Shephard Fairey as standard bearers for human knowledge is like using Frederic Mitterand to go to bat for Roman Polanski.

Oct 18, 2009 - 1:15 pm 68. Konyok:

Bogie, you’re hired!

There are some minor structural differences in the images that suggest a bit of free hand work – some rotation and stretching and shrinking of the image area. (This from a cartographer using Photoshop extensively to touch up scanned images of old and damaged maps. My eye is trained to look for such differences.)

Still, the big question that troubles me is that such obviously propagandistic images can be so eagerly lapped up by the “indie-hipster” world. (Hat tip to Whiskey.) For those with even the slightest bit of cultural awareness to adopt Fairey’s work requires an intricately nested sense of irony. Irony of irony of irony to some nth degree.

There might indeed be those who view the early Bolshevik period with misty eyed nostalgia, but it is nearly impossible to view this kind of art without reference to subsequent history. The reference can be either cautionary or ironic, but the very style means something to the culturally literate. (I would almost have expected that such an image of Obama would be propagated by opponents seeking to discredit the candidate … )

Of course, the greatest audience for the Fairey poster lacks the cultural or historical knowledge to make the connection.

The ultimate tragedy is that the Obama campaign represents the triumph of advertising over politics. The *lie* is the assurance of moderation given in hints and stage whispers. The product that was sold was the product delivered: an aesthetic sensibility in harmony with the “indie-hipster” pop culture.

Paris Hilton in 2012!

Oct 18, 2009 - 2:50 pm 69. mac:

Joseph Cannon:

Who the Hell are you to come into Wretchard’s house and tell ANYONE to “Shut Up” about ANY subject? You’ve got a lot of nerve. Go get your own blog and exercise your poor manners there.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:27 pm 70. Rob:

Part of the fair use test from Acuff-Rose is whether and to what extent the infringing work has harmed the market for the original. On this, I think the lying artist has a fairly strong case.

Oct 18, 2009 - 3:30 pm 71. Gordon:

SB/63–you mentioned documents that were photoshopped. Would you say more about this? This is new to me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:04 pm 72. bob k. mando:

Wretchard,

1. The first and most important thing
…
4. The fourth rule is the most important.

a logical error has slipped through in your prose.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:18 pm 73. wretchard:

a logical error has slipped through in your prose.

True.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:23 pm 74. Delia:

Lying is an ‘art’ it seems.

Being gut-wrenchingly honest is ‘abnormal’.

I’m of the latter.

Which seems to annoy the hell out of a lot of people.

I’m real and sometimes that’s all I have to give is just me being ‘me’.

Lying is a constant ‘game’ of ‘acting’ and requires a constant mentality of ‘backing up’ the lie.

I could never live that way. It would drive me nuckin’ futs.

LIES always catch up to you eventually.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:23 pm 75. Delia:

BTW.

Totally off-topic but…

I wanted to mention this before, Richard…

You’re updated photo is very handsome!

You have very kind eyes and I love your gray hair.
You wear black well, but, I bet you look stunning in vibrant baby blue or royal blue. You have perfect lips, a beautiful nose and lovely eyebrows.

You’ll have to pardon me…I’m a sculptor and I notice these things. lol

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:41 pm 76. Rurik:

62. whiskey
You understand. Of course for you to point this out is racist, or perhaps even, (with faux apologies to Whoopi) racist-racist. It is all, as Lenin and I would say, “kto-kogo”.
And thank you for providing me with a good sxplanation about why I insist that I am old, and devil take my friends who try to insist not really. Sixty is not the new fifty. Unless you’re adding up bills, maybe.

Oct 18, 2009 - 4:43 pm 77. wretchard:

rickl,

I like the picture of your cat. Meow.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:12 pm 78. JFSanders031:

My entry for Pharmaguy’s challenge.

Truth

@Wadeusaf, You mean like this,

O’Sh*t!

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:13 pm 79. ambisinistral:

Joseph Cannon,

It looks to me like he started by just posterizing the picture. He then cleaned up the edges a bit and vectorized the main shapes he had. It also looks like he moved, tilted and re-sized some of the elements slightly — probably for aesthetic reasons as well to obfuscate which picture it came from. He finished by slapping a couple of Obama logos in the background and spray painting patterns into the main shapes.

A couple of hours worth of work, although it may have taken him longer if he kept noodling with the color and brushes to get what he wanted.

That said, even though I suspect his fair use claim was wobbly, it makes no sense for him to lie about doing that.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:42 pm 80. Marie Claude:

photoshop works will never have the emotional power of a painting. With Painting, you deal with matter, forms, sensuality, time, sufferance,joy…

with PC programs you deal with a job you have to make, often from customers orders.

Now, I was educated in photoshop tool too, but it was called “Painter”, I found the progam a bit more subtile than Photoshop.

Photoshop and alikes, for me, are practical for providing some kind of clean carricatures, cartoons.. that you can tie in “sequences” for making short movies, caroons…

here is one of my “carricatures”, from 2006

http://bokedou-an-hanv.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-fairey-tale.html

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:54 pm 81. Doug:

58. herb:
*Totally!*
—
Bob K:
A Reealy Reealy important point, imo, is that there is nothing exceptional about the original work.
How would the poster have looked materially different if he had used any of a million shots of Our Messiah
featuring…
Get this:
AN UPTURNED HEAD!!!
—
What would be exceptional would be a photo, which by pure luck, did not look like Dumbo.

—
PS on CS and Photoshop 7
Let’s all make fun of Bogie for not shelling out ~2 grand for the latest version of Adobe CS whatever.
—
PS PS (as Wretch would say!)
I stopped @ 7 also Bogie, although I still use paint shop pro 4 for some tasks!
Photoshop 4 runs on Vista, fwiw!

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:55 pm 82. Rurik:

67. Konyok:

You too friend have something important to add. Yes, the iggeran fools have not the sense to realize they are unconsciously mocking themselves. What is to be said about double-inverse self-satire, stood on its head? Overthrow Anarchy! or Smash Nihilism!
Just be careful. You may promote Paris Hilton but get Perez Hilton instead.

Oct 18, 2009 - 5:55 pm 83. Rurik:

71. bob k. mando and 73. wretchard

Yes, but the second rule is also the most important. And so is the third rule. And now Cardinal Fang will read the charges …

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:00 pm 84. bob k. mando:

Wretchard
well, yes. there could hardly be any debate that there was a logical error.

i was HOPING that you would correct the essay to more accurately reflect your thinking.

*nudge*

because, you see, i’d like to link this to another discussion area. unfortunately, one of the participants is one of those passive-aggressive leftist pantywaists who is likely to fixate on said logical error and attempt to derail any discussion of the larger point which you actually made.

Rurik,
this gambit might have been successful but for ONE thing. i was expecting the Spanish Inquisition!

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:09 pm 85. Subotai Bahadur:

#70 Gordon

The first one posted was an buy-over-the-internet “for novelty use only” wink-wink blank birth certificate form that was altered to appear to be a Hawaiian birth certificate. There were some small problems with it. Besides not looking like the real thing used at the time, it lacked the impressed seal [which would show on a scan, while the watermark would not] and it lacked the leak through from the registrar’s stamp on the back showing it was paid for. That ink is designed to bleed through on purpose to show that it is real.

After the faults were too public, they posted a second “real” birth certificate. Except it was someone else’s with the name and data photoshopped, clumsily, in.

After repeated efforts at deception, the only conclusion is that there is something being hidden. As I said then, a birth certificate shows just a few things; date of birth, place of birth, name of parents, and race in some states [including Hawaii]. As much as it might surprise some, given his legendary reticence on the subject, it is already a matter of public record that Obama is black. The date of birth is not particularly in dispute, and even if it was, if it turns out that he is a year or two older or younger than he says, it does not affect anything but the number of candles on his birthday cake. There theoretically may be something with his parentage, but as much as I detest him, if it showed that he was either illegitimate or had a different father; who bloody well cares? The only other data that is there to be “encoded” as we were talking about is place of birth. And the only possible damage from that information would be if he was born outside US territory, given the immigration and naturalization laws of the time. After all, if he was born in Seattle or Kansas; that would have no effect. The entire matter would be totally settled if he would have released the long form of his birth certificate. Box 7C of the Hawaii long form states, “State or Country of Birth”. It costs $10 for a certified copy. Obama has spent what is by now north of $1 million to keep from having to show that document. He has not offered any reason or principle that is the basis for the refusal; other than “NO”. Leaving aside any questions about mental capacity in this case, his course of action seems … anomalous.

Subotai Bahadur

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:12 pm 86. JFSanders031:

@MC, who is this Craig? Why does he hate French bastards more than any other bastard? And why the star of David on the field? Is this supposed to mean that U.S.A. is ruled by Jews? And that American Jews hate those French bastards? It is all so incoherent. Please expound upon your art.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:13 pm 87. wretchard:

Wretchard
well, yes. there could hardly be any debate that there was a logical error. i was HOPING that you would correct the essay to more accurately reflect your thinking.

Consider it corrected. I’m leaving the error in the main text, otherwise the comments would hardly make sense. Think of it as a transaction log. The truth value of the post is the original record with all of the transactions applied.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:14 pm 88. bogie wheel:

For the record, Wretchard, you are more difficult to Pshop than The Won. I guess that’s a good thing?

Here’s my effort at Pharmaguy’s challenge:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43729545@N06/4023876819/

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:28 pm 89. bob k. mando:

Consider it corrected.

corrected to what? i’m not trying to be tedious, but i seem to have missed where you may have clarified which point ( #1 or #4 ) you actually consider to be most important to successful lying.

i’m not sure how it could be #4, as anyone who “stands up to it” will often be “big enough” to expose the lie for what it is.

trying to keep your lies primarily to “true believers” is an excellent way to further your deception. the key is to get the marks to invest themselves in the lie someway. thereafter, any attacks on the lie will often be conflated as an attack on the fellow traveler/mark and the fellow traveler will feign offense so that he will not have to defend the lie itself.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:30 pm 90. Mongoose:

Subotai: well true enough as far as it goes, but I have some objections. The Cold War “Social Democracy” and “Social Market” political orders were, in great measure, foisted on Europe by the American New Dealers after the war, or, at the very least, they rallied local fellow travelers and gave them material, moral and political support and cover. They were in Europe in a position of most supreme command in the immediate post-war years. They could not, hard as they tried, get away with this in the USA after the war, but they could manage to pull it off in Europe. It may be too much of a simplification to say that Fascism was a reaction to International Socialism and Soviet Bolshevism, or that it used this opposition as its main justification for Fascist pursuit of power. It rather was an internecine struggle between collectivists–more of a Mob turf battle than anything else. The real enemy for both was the old order and all that it had promised, all it had achieved and then destroyed. All Fascists and all Communists knew this. But it is true that the Cold War was used as an excuse to inject “The Third Way” into Europe after the war. It is a profound irony, and a most bitter one. Had the New Dealer cohort not been so determined about it, and had the American Right of those days not been so insular and parochial, it might have worked out differently. I would like to say that the new National State, The EU, is the final fruit of their efforts, but I doubt that we will be that fortunate.

Beyond that though, the real fundamental divide is WW1. If our 19th century, Wasp elites differed from the Continental elites, titles aside, it was more due to their Anglo-Saxon heritage and the nature of the “Anglosphere” than that of a fundamental American branching from Europe, though it is true that our vigorous and still young elites at this point had mostly earned their place (one should not forget though that the British system in the early and mid 19th century came closest to a meritocratic of any of the European powers.) The emerging Bourgeois of the British Empire were much like our elites of the Glided Age, and were in fact the model for American would be aristocrats.

WW1, or perhaps the whole period through from 1914 to 1945, the Great European Civil War, as it were, is one of the the key points of European history, so much so that it is hard for American to grasp it even unto this day. The war, most particularly what we call WW1, shaped Europe consciousness much, like our Civil War has shaped ours but with radically different outcomes: A generation was decimated, and it is surely true that many of the best and the brightest died in the killing fields of that cataclysm. Crown and Altar were cracked and broken. The old political and moral order was rent asunder, and by its own incompetent and enfeebled hands. Here was the deciding break: New men, hideous, small, vile, depraved and debased men, rushed to fill in the void. Had the war not had happened, these men would have never seen the light of day. They would have ended their days in petty criminal careers or in a garret or asylum. They would have not risen to such power. We would never have known the names Lenin or Stalin or Hitler or Mussolini.

Yes it is true that America was a much different place in 1840 than was Europe, but the cultural differences were not that broad. Even up until WW2, in some senses of the term, Europe did have a superior culture, however hindbound their “political cultures” may have been. This gradually ceased to be the case over these years until we arrive in 1945. There America rushes past them.

It is really the separate transits on the other side of the “Second 30 Years War” that set us apart. The breaks start at the Somme.

In my mind Europe is dying. It is sort of Cargo Cult. But the Great White Gods are not coming back no matter how much they try to invoke the ghosts of past glory or superficially mimic American institutions. Most certainly, you are quite right to say they now are an adversary, and in their foolishness and arrogance a most dangerous one. In the next 10 years, as the EU tries to assert itself as a world power, the West will be in great danger, perhaps its greatest since the Hun and Gothic invasions. The EU will fail–it cannot do otherwise–but as they the flail about as a wounded animal they may well bring tragedy to us as well. The West is at a great crossroads. We look to be taking the wrong turn.

One prays that there is still time. America cannot exist alone as the last stand of the West. If Europe falls so do we. It is just a matter of time.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:37 pm 91. Subotai Bahadur:

# 85 JFSanders031

As I said above in #63 above”

sometimes to allow her to lay out her views so that others at BC can seen just how …. far off … they are from what we consider to be reality.

She says it is one of her “carracatures”. I think perhaps a view has been laid out for us to see.

Wo3 de5 ma1 he2 ta1 de5 feng1kuang2 de5 wai4sheng5 dou1

Subotai Bahadur

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:40 pm 92. Marie Claude:

85 JFSanders

“C” was an american fellow with whom I argued a lot on a ME blog, we finally became net friends. Though a final harsh catfight ended our complicity, now we are like “strangers”, with banal salutations.

My carricature didn’t reflect only his attitude, but also one of the whole group with whom I was in relation.

French were your favorite scapegoat, don’t you remember ?

This was in 2006, remember, Israel’s attack on Lebanon, Chirac and Condi trying to get a cessez-le-feu…

Americans, American Jews, and Israeli were unified to break some stones on our back, cuz, for them, “we” were empeching that the conflict went to an army solution, every single thing that went wrong was because of our politic…. and, still, always the damn Saddam thing in the middle

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:42 pm 93. Josh:

bogie wheel @ 87:
Here’s my effort at Pharmaguy’s challenge:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43729545@N06/4023876819/

Outstanding!

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:42 pm 94. wretchard:

#4 shouldn’t actually be a rule. Numbers 1-3 are generic ways to spread deceit. Claim a source of authority, put it beyond local challenge and destroy the challengers. This may even have been the way usurpers to thrones in centuries past legitimized themselves.

#4 describes the limits of numbers 1-3. Now that I think about it, numbers 1-3 depend on being able to select a context for fraudulent success. To some extent all fraud depends on exploiting disconnected regions of knowledge. Rudyard Kipling’s story The Man Who Would be King is an interesting fictional example of how this happens. The problem is what happens when the counter-evidence shows up. In the case of The Man Who Would be King, the locals find out that the British white man is flesh-and-blood like them. Once it is realized they are not gods, all hell breaks loose.

The problem with Fairey and Churchill was that they had achieved success in their relatively disconnected domains and there wasn’t enough at stake to make the counter-evidence muster itself to appear. So while they remained within that domain they were “safe”. But since both relied on ever-increasing doses of fame to survive, eventually each crossed over the line into the larger context and their fictional universes began to collide with unreconciled reality. #4 asserts that you should always avoid bringing exposure on yourself, though it may happen anyway unintentionally.

Thanks BTW, for forcing me to think this problem through a little more. I’ve come to understand it better now that when I tossed it out in that offhand way.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:47 pm 95. bogie wheel:

PS on CS and Photoshop 7
Let’s all make fun of Bogie for not shelling out ~2 grand for the latest version of Adobe CS whatever.

Geez, Doug, I don’t even own a washer & dryer, and now I’m gonna get ribbed for being woefully behind with PS7?

Ekshually, I do have CS4 Design Premium on my computer at work (a Mac Book Pro). Somehow I managed to talk my supervisor into buying all that for me. Amazing how the words “I can’t do my job when I’m offsite with no laptop” can have a magical effect.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:53 pm 96. presbypoet:

W. 86
The answer to what seems logical error, is simple paradox. Each is most important. Each necessary, yet none sufficient. Hence numbering is mere illusion, artifact of single dimensioned time system.
I believe 4 could be “you have know when to hold em, and when to fold em.”

Unlike this blog, where no post happens unless you will it into existence. Thence cometh your arbitrary god like decisions, to close comments. Which nobody can deny.

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:54 pm 97. Mark:

Subotai:

About the birth certificate, I assume also that something is being hidden. I don’t think that there is anything like a blockbuster in the long form. But people are investigating index data that might indicate that Obama has made changes to his file that would be reflected on a certificate of live birth, which is based on the actual birth certificate and subsequent filed changes.

I suspect that Obama does not want anything released because any attention to the issue attracts attention. (#4 asserts that you should always avoid bringing exposure on yourself, though it may happen anyway unintentionally. )

As in “The Purloined Letter,” the real item of interest is probably right in the open, i.e., the question of who is a “natural born citizen.” A child whose father is a Kenyan/British subject is a citizen, but not likely a natural born citizen, according to an understanding of that term over the course of two centuries. A natural born citizen is one whose parents (both of them) are citizens and is born on American soil.

Most Americans could care less about the issue, conflating “citizen” and “natural born citizen.” But it’s a legal issue regardless, and Obama should have addressed the issue rather than avoiding it. Democrats insisted that McCain prove his natural born citizen status. (Bobby Jindal probably would not meet the test.)

It’s the cover-up that gets you in the end.

Leo Donofrio at “Natural Born Citizen” covers the topic of who can be a natural born citizen and why Obama is not. This is not a “birther” matter; it is constitutional question for legal discussion. It is in Obama’s interest to deflect attention from this question and lump all discussion of his eligibility for office into a “birther” category.

New poster: “Citizen”

Oct 18, 2009 - 6:56 pm 98. Josh:

wretchard @ 93: Hunter S. Thompson wrote about The Edge, which you don’t really know until you’ve gone over it. In any field of endeavor, you don’t know where the line is unless you push, including fraud. Who knows, you could become president.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:05 pm 99. Doug:

Bogie,
Looking at their ads lately, I’m almost led to believe that if I just shelled out enough dough to Adobe, I’d become an artist.
Since I don’t have it, the point is moot.

Our Czar

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:14 pm 100. bogie wheel:

The first and most important thing is for the impostor to claim the motivation of revolutionary impulses. That way even those who know he is lying will think he is lying in a “good” cause. If the last refuge of scoundrels is the flag, the ultimate protective banner is the Red Flag. Hannah Arendt once wrote “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.” Find the hole in your audience’s brain and drive your truck of manure through it.

The big lie that I can’t understand how the left has successfully covered up all these years from the public at large is the body count that Communism racked up in the 20th century. Hitler is appropriately reviled. But how can Mao, for instance, be considered remotely someone to cite as one’s “favorite political philosopher”? That’s not just a case of having a hole in the brain. That’s all hole, no brain.

I remember watching “The Way We Were” for the first time a couple years ago and being annoyed that Streisand’s character had a Stalin poster on her wall during college (1940s) and was never called out on that (even though the movie had plenty of politics in it, and there were stark political differences between her and the Redford charcter), nor did she ever acknowledge any revision of her opinion, for the rest of the movie. So she gets a pass on admiring and celebrating one of the most prolific mass murderers in history because … why?

Again, imagine if she’d had a Hitler poster on her wall.

There was an old Simpsons episode where Homer and Marge accompanied Marge’s sisters to China, where the sisters were trying to adopt a Chinese girl. The family went to Mao’s tomb (dunno if there is such a thing … I’ve been to Lenin’s but never to China to see what they do or don’t have), and Homer remarked, as only Homer could, “Awww, he looks like he’s sleeping. Just like a little angel who killed 50 million people.”

Satire is fine, but you’d like some revulsion to accompany it. I don’t see the revulsion anywhere on the horizon. 50-70 million dead Chinese ain’t even a statistic as far as most Americans are concerned … they don’t even know about it.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:20 pm 101. Subotai Bahadur:

#96 Mark

Just curious, but what changes on a birth certificate could he have made that would affect him politically? In contemporary America, nothing that affects the parents could be blamed on him. The only factors that relate to him are what I listed, I think. ….. unless.

I don’t believe any birth certificate lists religion …. Nah!

I don’t mind admitting that I miss things. I am officially an old fart, and the mind is not as sharp as it used to be. What am I missing?

Subotai Bahadur

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:27 pm 102. Doug:

“#4 asserts that you should always avoid bringing exposure on yourself, though it may happen anyway unintentionally.”
—
Henceforth, this will be referred to as the “Balloon Dad Imperative”

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:03 pm 103. Rurik:

83. bob k. mando:

Then you are noone! But extra points for the comeback!

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:11 pm 104. RagnarD:

Mean Old Man (Status = Grumpy) @ 19:

I know what you speak of.

The COO of the Co I used to work for was much the same. Dishonest to the core. I left because:

I was approached by an old boss with an open position at a site familiar to me and in which I fit the bill. I told Old Boss that we could bid the job as a contract = save then some pain (backfilling for a soldier being deployed) + do the current employer good. Old Boss’ company said no. COO bottom feeder suggested that I get the job through the old company, they would keep me on the books under the table at the present company and I could get them in to contracts via “the back door”. I said not only no but f— no. And then the fight started. I left pointing out how scummy this was. The owners and the COO did not understand the ethical issues to this day. So sad.

The society has abandoned the old ways of highly ethical behavior because they see the societies “leaders” displaying extremely self-serving and unethical positions and actions under the justification of expediency. Unless and until it changes, the society will continue it’s downward spiral. The current regime snuck it’s camel’s nose under the tent claiming it would do just this and look how this has ended up. The most corrupt bunch we could hope to see is now in power and engineering the downfall of the society and culture and do not even see their own actions as poisonous.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:51 pm 105. bob k. mando:

Then you are noone! But extra points for the comeback!

shhhh! don’t tell anyone, that’s supposed to be a secret.

The big lie that I can’t understand how the left has successfully covered up all these years from the public at large is the body count that Communism racked up in the 20th century. Hitler is appropriately reviled. But how can Mao, for instance, be considered remotely someone to cite as one’s “favorite political philosopher”? That’s not just a case of having a hole in the brain. That’s all hole, no brain.

the left controls all the levers of pop culture and most of the levers of main stream news.

it is not that the millions of murdered under Stalin and Mao are ‘unknown’, it is that the cabals in charge of making movies/television/news have free reign to choose what they wish to talk about.

and they wish to talk about the crimes of Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh and Saddam, et al? they don’t want to talk about those so much.

they are emotionally invested in the lie and willfully misconstrue any attack on Marxist philosophy as an attack on themselves.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:56 pm 106. Mad Fiddler:

As a graphic artist I have from time to time had reason to delve into the question of fair use versus infringement of someone’s ownership rights of an image.

I recall a case in which an ad agency saw in a stock photo catalog from which you purchase use rights for a negotiated fee. They liked the shot, but didn’t either didn’t want to pay the license fee, or wanted to have the rights to an image in perpetuity. So they hired a photographer and gave explicit instructions on the location (a carousel, IIRC) the type of couple they wanted, and the pose they desired.

The resulting photo, not surprisingly, bears striking resemblance to the original stock photo. This similarity in the fullness of time gained the attention of the stock photography firm, which brought suit for infringement.

They won their suit.

I’ll try to track down particulars.

Of course, part of the difficulty is the general problem in U.S. adversary legal proceedings, in which the outcome can be determined by emotional appeals, tangential issues, and differences in the funding of the opposing attorneys.

About Joseph Cannon’s assertions:

I’ve done a number of political sketches, and interviewed and known a few widely published political / editorial cartoonists, and I would say that there are plenty who pride themselves on drawing their own interpretations (”caricatures,” if you like) of celebrity likenesses. Naturally the artists MUST study archival photos. When I was doing a lot of that, most of the photos available to me were less than an inch high, screened at about 65 lines per inch. Pretty grainy. You have to sketch from a lot of photos like that to get to where you can draw your caricature consistently in any pose or expression.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:01 pm 107. Rurik:

104. bob k. mando:

So you understand that Noone expects the Spanish Inquisition. Still more points. Your secret is safe with me.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:16 pm 108. Ned:

Subotai,
Please refresh me on “twanloc”.
Ned
P.S. I look forward to your essays here at BC.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:18 pm 109. Mad Fiddler:

By the way, statutory and commonlaw copyright protection for intellectual property of any sort, recognize the right of the original owner of the copyrighted work to control exclusively any derivative work made based on that work.

The use of a photograph owned by another may be allowed by certain carefully defined provisions of “fair use.”

Claiming you didn’t do it for financial gain does not make a rip-off into “fair use.”

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:18 pm 110. Pharmaguy:

I see that within 6 hours of my challenge we already have two entries, JFSanders031 @ #77 and BogieWheel @ #87. So it cant take too long. JFS and BW, how many layers? How much time did it take?

I am hoping we can convince Richard to display the winning entry on his page in place of his photo for a day or two.

It’s already Monday in chilly New England, and the banks in Switzerland have been open for hours. I best make good on my challenge soon. I am glad to be back working F/T and have the $ to support this great site.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:24 pm 111. Wadeusaf:

Just for fun, two offerings but both done by the Obamame web site.

Liars and not liars

I am checking out share ware as I don’t want to shell out $ or ever Obama bucks for Photo shot. So we’ll see if this dog can learn any new woof, woof. er tricks.

Also, an observation,

# one was first and most important THING.
# four was the most important RULE.

With out conforming to number one there would be no way to conform to number four. Non conformance to any of the cited rules could result in negative publicity and if negative enough, would prove positive for some other lie.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:24 pm 112. elby:

Okay, this probably doesn’t qualify as an entry to Pharmaguy’s contest, but if I make a few minor changes to it will it count as original work? Remember, Wretchard is a cat. That Fernandez guy is just a front man.

Wretchard at the controls of his blog: http://tinyurl.com/wretchard-the-cat

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:35 pm 113. PA Cat:

107 Ned

TWANLOC = Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen

rickl and elby: Thanks for the kitteh pics. My three Feline Americans are duly appreciative too.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:40 pm 114. Mark:

Subotai: .

You are correct that a person can’t change a birth certificate, as far as I know. Obama’s COLB seems to be “filed” and not “accepted,” which may mean, according to some commenters, that information on the COLB differs from that on the long form.

Still, the real issue seems to be whether Obama is indeed a “natural born citizen” eligible to hold the office of President. Statements of Hawaii officials that he is a natural born citizen open the way for citizens to request information that supports the officials’ claim. The entertainment value thus far has been in watching the Hawaii officials very carefully try to extricate themselves from what seems a precarious position.

Here’s what Donofrio writes, way back on Oct. 1:

* * * * *

But more important is that all of the above records pertaining to Fukino’s July 27th press release must also be disclosed.

WHAT DEFINITION OF “NATURAL-BORN” CITIZEN DID FUKINO RELY UPON?

The statement, “…Obama…is a natural-born American citizen…”, contains both a factual determination as well as a legal definition. In order to decipher the factual determination made public by that conclusion, we must first know the legal definition of “natural-born America citizen” that Fukino determined Obama conformed to.

Without that legal definition, we can’t analyze the factual determination.

For example, if she used a definition which alleges anyone born on US soil is therefore a natural-born citizen, then the factual determination for this statement might only be concerned with records she viewed which led her to believe Obama was born in the US.

If, on the other hand, she used a definition which required that Obama was born in the US to parents who were citizens, then the factual determination involved with the “natural-born” part of her statement would have taken into account records she viewed which stated who his parents were.

Hawaii Attorney General Mark Bennett reviewed and approved the July 27th press release so we should assume that an Attorney General opinion letter exists. I personally issued a UIPA request for this letter to DoH Director Fukino on Sept. 28, 2009.

While the following analysis centers on disclosure of Attorney General opinions letters, it equally applies to all other government records kept by any state official or body covered by the UIPA – ie, emails, memos, photographs, minutes, etc. – which pertain to the July 27th press release.

ATTORNEY GENERAL OPINION LETTERS CANNOT BE A SWORD AND A SHIELD.

Haw. Rev. Stat. 28-3 imposes an affirmative duty upon the Attorney General to document and make public all opinions he gives upon a question of law submitted by the head of an agency:

§28-3 Gives opinions. The attorney general shall, when requested, give opinions upon questions of law submitted by the governor, the legislature, or its members, or the head of any department. The attorney general shall file a copy of each opinion with the lieutenant governor, the public archives, the supreme court library, and the legislative reference bureau within three days of the date it is issued. Opinions on file with the lieutenant governor, the public archives, and the supreme court library shall be available for public inspection.

The word “shall” signifies an affirmative duty to document the opinion as well as make it public. This means that even if no Attorney General opinion letter currently exists, since a question of law was submitted to AG Bennet by the head of a state agency – DoH Director Fukino – the opinion received by her must be put in letter form and made available to the public.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:00 pm 115. Lifeofthemind:

Joseph Cannon,
YOU DON’T HAVE ANY RIGHT TO AN OPINION. JUST SHUT UP!

LoTM,
No

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:07 pm 116. Doug:

“By the way, statutory and commonlaw copyright protection for intellectual property of any sort, recognize the right of the original owner of the copyrighted work to control exclusively any derivative work made based on that work.”
—
Fiddler,
Have any suggestions or links to something like “Copyright Law for Dummies” ?
Does drudge get permission for every picture he posts?

—
Lifeof:
Your opinion is invalid.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:20 pm 117. Subotai Bahadur:

# 89 Mongoose

Sorry I did not answer you right away. In scrolling down, I went past you and did not notice your comment. I just found it while skimming through again.

My analysis was vastly condensed because I was covering a whole lot of ground [bloody thing was 2000 words even so], and I won’t argue with your interpretation, but I would like to add a thought or two.

The Socialist/Marxist movements were indigenous to Europe, and were already part of the political mainstream; to a limited extent before WW I [even being the official opposition in Wilhelmine Germany and being the government that surrendered], and definitely between the wars where the Social Democrats were a governing party during part of the Weimar Republic and in France where the “Popular Front” government of the Communists and different flavors of Socialists ran the government in the mid to late 1930’s.

Yes, after the German surrender in 1945 we had absolute power to the west of the soon to be imposed Iron Curtain, but the occupation authorities were operating with two major boundary constraints. On one side, it was not possible to support the creation of new governments that were either militaristic or authoritarian. The American body politic would not have tolerated it at all. On the other side, with the coming of the Iron Curtain, anything that appeared to be overtly Marxist would have gotten the same reaction.

The craving at the time was a return to normalcy, even in the US and Britain. Socialist parties were some of their [Europe's] norm. Absent the ability to export the DAR or reincarnate George Washington and send him to Europe; we had to allow Social Democrat/Socialist parties to be part of the equation. I offer the thought that in the aftermath of both world wars, the societies no longer had the strength to resist the call of the collective, indeed that call had always been stronger than the concept of the individual in Europe. I absolutely agree with your point about the societal cost of the losses in WW I, and would include those of WW II in the equation in all of Western Europe. Add to that, the fact that at that time we ourselves had just taken the first steps towards socialism under Franklin Roosevelt; and Europe was going to get its new start with a loading dose infection of the Left. Mind you, this is all in hindsight, and the people who were trying to get things done in those chaotic days, with the exception of those Soviet moles that we know now from Soviet documents that had infiltrated both Europe and the US; were doing the best that they could, with what they had, with limited resources once the war was over.

I would not change a word of your last two paragraphs. Europe is simply marking time waiting for the fatal blow, and for events to decide which of the adversaries that compete to conquer them will deliver it. The tonic-clonic agonal reactions are going to be distinctly untidy.

Subotai Bahadur

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:30 pm 118. Mad Fiddler:

Doug,

Sorry I don’t know any simple books, but I’m afraid copyright issues deal with ownership and all the fistfights and wrassling that have always arisen from that. Lots of detail. But the book I’ll mention here is pretty readable.

It’s been several decades since I read it (it’s now two full volumes) but the best book I’ve come across for getting an understanding of copyright and how intellectual property right can be prised apart and dealt with is

This Business of Music [this may just be volume I]
original author M. William Krasilovsky (now in the 10th edition so there’s a crowd…)
Hardcover: 576 pages
Publisher: Billboard Books; 10 edition (June 26, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0823077233
ISBN-13: 978-0823077236

Of course, it talks a lot about the music business (odd, that) recording contracts, representation & agency relationships, subsidiary rights, the history and logic behind the consent decrees leading to the formation of the “rights-monitoring agencies” BMI and ASCAP, how “Muzak” functions, et cetera.

Most of those things turn out to be inextricable from copyright issues.

As I recall, it’s more readable than most software manuals I’ve had to deal with.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:38 pm 119. olde fogey:

Bogie @ 99

Yes, there is really a Mao tomb in Beijing. The object inside looks more like a wax caricature than anything in Madame Tussauds.

I was with a delegation of international bankers and we were brought to the site in black limos passing a disciplined line of locals waiting for at least three large NY blocks. We were deposited a few feet from the front of the line and Chinese officials motioned us out of the cars and to the head of the line. Not one word was uttered nor was a hostile gesture made as far back as I could see.

We paraded by the wax creation and were escorted back to our cars and departed and the waiting populace once again started inching forward.

I wonder if they will copy the design for “The Ones” tomb some day and if the lines will be as long?

Oct 18, 2009 - 11:16 pm 120. M. Simon:

That hasn’t stopped the global warming scammers.

The sky used to be falling. Now it is going to fall in ten or twenty years.

This has caused a considerable fall off in believers. However, there are still enough faithful to make AGW a respectable faith and thus worthy of government support. Especially considering how well the faith supports the government.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:19 am 121. JFSanders031:

@pharmaguy, One layer and it took less than 5 minutes. The website does it all for you except tracing around the subject.

Go to the site: Obamicon.ME

Oct 19, 2009 - 3:56 am 122. overtherainbo:

Hey, Fellowbabies,
Man, so much to say, and so little time… I am compelled to read here, I mean the company of you Belmont posters and your discussions are so cool: Black swan, OODA loop, the 3 conjectures, encryption stuff, etc. I had not encountered these subjects, and I keenly regret that there are few people in my circle of friends who are interested in or even familiar with any of the discussions I have encountered here. And I very much want this to continue to be a forum where we can enjoy the discussion whatever the issue. There are many who post here who have given me hours of food for thought, and I am frankly/genuinely jealous of many of you whose knowledge and abilities to express yourself in so many areas of expertise exceed mine. (you may trust, however, that when I start my own blog, I will quote you all mercilessly – without attribution) I first learned of the existence of Belmont from my brother, who reads and posts regularly; and he is a big fan of Belmont for the same reasons. This blog has captured me and brought my interest back.
Back in 2000 or thereabouts, I used to enjoy a certain blog that concerned itself with amateur astronomy: lots of interesting discussion including serious astrophysics and the occasional remarks by serious scientists, amateur observations of celestial events, technical discussion including very good detailed plans to build Dobson telescope, and a general forum. Naturally the events of 9-11 were discussed in the general forum; but as the media covered the slow progression of the Administration’s exploration of the UN attitudes concerning Iraq, the forum began to be dominated by Liberals who were immediately dismissive and determined to quell any dissenters; and in short order, those oh-so-open-minded Liberals were so vituperative and bitter that I absented myself permanently ; and I honestly never expected to frequent any blog after 2003. I really, really do not want to see that low level of discourse repeated here; I like Belmont; it’s posters and host are very witty, well-informed, generous with their information, willing to talk shop — something I really like because thereby I am informed, if only to a superficial level — and, most of all, this is a friendly, collegial place. I can imagine myself sitting in a dark gentleman’s-style club, paneled walls, chandeliers, and all my friends telling stories while lounging in high-backed, overstuffed leather chairs, with cigars and brandy — or my special addiction: lots of icy cold cola —. O vision of the White Hart.
I agree with steveaz 46, Tinian 47, JFSaners031 51, and mac 68; let’s grant that you have some level of expertise, Joseph Cannon; but get over yourself. If you disagree, discuss the differences, and try to be civil. I like it here, and I would very much like it to stay that way.
I am an old school artist and I very much prefer to use traditional tools; however, my brother and I had a business in advertising film production. I love the color and definition of film; it’s an old technology, well understood and controlled. Back in the day I sneered at the idea that video might ever become important. And, lo, I have been dragged kicking and screaming into subservience to the mighty god, Computer, and his acolytes, Illustrator and Photoshop. Okay so I’ve been using computers since 1990, and so have many, many others; and that is why a little humility is good. I have won awards for my art in international art shows; so what? outside of my family and a few friends, nobody knows my name. I know many people who paint or draw exceptionally well but they never have or will exhibit their work, but they are very, very good, they just haven’t got any belief in their ability. One of my encounters with a young man viewing an art show told how irrelevant my abilities are: we spoke for a few minutes, but then, while holding my eyes with an intense scrutiny, he said in a challenging tone that his brother had made an application to the very art show in which I was currently exhibiting. Clearly he thought he deal was rigged, and that I was occupying a spot is brother deserved. That’s my fan base keeping me humble.
A certain amount of chutzpah is okay, but don’t let it get out of control; after all, there are millions of users familiar with Photoshop, and most of them will use tools or work-arounds that may be completely unfamiliar to you.
And as for you Boogie Wheel, I say, “Right On, man.” In my Mac-users group I am an acknowledged Luddite. But, I have three G3s still chugging along just fine; and I love Illustrator 7 and Photoshop 5. I resent that in spite of promises made long ago ( and far away) Apple promised that future programs would “look back” and blend with their ancestor programs; and OS 10 was a pain to relearn or change my habits. And I especially resent new programs that gratuitously include things like html language so one can write directly to the web – as if this wasn’t already included in other easily available packages. And if you buy the new program, then you discover that the footprint is so large, and detail changes in the program force one to by a newer computer. Okay so now we have a g5, but not with a dual core…!!! aaaaarghhhhhhh Hmmm, maybe I better go lie down til my mood swings, and I can return to being the little fuzzy yellowish, white ball of light that my friends recognize.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:41 am 123. ScenarioAa:

Mongoose@89: “America cannot exist alone as the last stand of the West. If Europe falls so do we. It is just a matter of time.”

No! I find myself in agreement with most of what you write, but on this we disagree. It cannot be so. It must not be so. Europe has already fallen – the future is being defined elsewhere. The best we can hope for our European friends is that the pace of their decline into historical obscurity is slow.

As Europe slides into the shadows, caught a trap of its own design, the dominant entity on the North American continent has its own very substantial geopolitical advantages – and options.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:46 am 124. Scythianeedle:

Doug @ 115 -

As I understand things, most news agencies make a lot of their revenues from licensing fees and contracts to provide content – stories, commentary, images.

Look up any of these: United Press International, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters… Each begun as collective news-gathering and distribution organizations providing per-use and subscriber services to local newspapers, then radio, then tv, now internet.

Maybe we should ask our host how images and links are selected and used…

Or contact Matt Drudge and ask him.

Seems reasonable to me.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:26 am 125. wretchard:

Some people have taken the trouble to meet Pharmaguy’s poster challenge. I will hold a poll of commenters in two weeks and whoever gets the most votes will be awarded a modest prize, courtesy of some contributions I’ve received, which I propose to be an Amazon gift certificate.

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:43 pm 126. bogie wheel:

Pharmaguy – 9 layers, 1 hour. What I posted was actually version 2a … the first looked kinda sorta like a younger Wretchard … the second, older but not that much like him … in 2a I made slight alterations to the bangs and eyes.

It’s a four-color poster, and once you get the hang of Fairey’s approach — from perimeter to center, the colors go from dark blue to red to light blue to buff (using a 50% opacity brush for the “between” shadings where the light blue transitions to buff) — you can start anticipating what needs to go where.

On the Obama picture that I linked to at 55, my first step was to use Channel Mixer to reduce the pic to approx 4 colors, then I used Hue-Saturation to desaturate further and Brightness-Contrast to sharpen the areas of highlight & shadow, and the edges in between. FWIW, what ended up being the buff-colored areas in the Fairey poster matched almost exactly one-to-one the locations of the “blown-out” highlights when I pushed the contrast in PS … right down to the tiny highlight on Obama’s left eyelid (left, as you look at him). IOW, the color reduction and contrast boosting I did in Photoshop gave me a “paint by numbers” map that allowed me to then fill in Fairey’s poster colors and end up with something pretty damn close to what Fairey did (which could have been even closer to identical with some edge cleanup and a mask layer to produce the blue horizonal lines).

And, yes, he appears to have rotated the image clockwise ever so slightly … there’s a shade less tilt to O’s head & his ears are more level. I didn’t bother to do this, but it can be done easily in PS.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:10 pm 127. bogie wheel:

Okay, this probably doesn’t qualify as an entry to Pharmaguy’s contest, but if I make a few minor changes to it will it count as original work? Remember, Wretchard is a cat. That Fernandez guy is just a front man.

LOL, elby.

Would that be because, on the internet, nobody knows if you’re a cat?

P.S. The semi-old-timers at BC will remember when Wretchard’s pic actually *was* a cartoon cat.

Oct 19, 2009 - 5:20 pm 128. JMH:

Interesting that we had a , ahem, loose cannon come careening through the comment section using very by-the-book left-wing tactics to defend Fairey. Generally he was a troll unworthy of comment except for the text-book example he provided for what leftist tactics look like. Worth remembering as we go forward:

1) Claim to be a critic of the subject you are defending (”I’m not exactly Fairey’s biggest fan…I also have some notoriety as an Obama critic.”)

2) Make a claim to authority (”I know Photoshop at least as well as Fairey does”)

3) Back up your personal claim to authority with claims to higher authority (”One of my art teachers was Nancy Ohanian”)

4) Set up a straw man and call him names (”Only a dolt would impugn the talent that went into her insanely detailed cross-hatched works.”) Note here that Ohanian’s work is not under debate, Fairey’s is.

5) Throw out a misdirection ploy to try and get people talking about something else (”Incidentally, the fellow who took the Obama photograph has testified that he never assigned the rights to AP. If that is true, then AP has lied in court filings.”)

If the sheep don’t accept your argument or go after your red herring:

6) Double down on your specific claims (”You can’t make a new version of the Obama poster through a mechanical or automatic process.”)

7) Scream that anyone who disagrees with you has no right to speak and should STFU. (”UNLESS YOU CAN DRAW, SHUT UP ABOUT ART. DO NOT OPINE ABOUT HOW THE STUFF IS MADE. DO NOT OPINE ABOUT WHICH TECHNIQUES ARE FAIR AND WHICH ARE NOT. JUST SHUT UP. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. YOU DON’T HAVE ANY RIGHT TO AN OPINION. JUST SHUT UP!”)

All this followed by:

8 ) Dissapear when your fraud is uncovered by some guy sitting around in his pajamas. Or whatever Bogie and JFSanders were wearing.

Now, just because I was curious, I took a trip over to our loose cannon’s blog. I didn’t read in-depth, but did note he seems to be rather critical of the TeaParty movement and thinks it’s all Bush’s fault. Also appears to be an AGW “Beliefer” for what that’s worth.

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:12 pm 129. Scythianeedle:

Thanks for the follow-up, JMH.

What used to be called “investigative Journalism.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 7:50 pm 130. pharmaguy:

I did not mean to put our host on the spot with my challenge, but it has already served a useful purpose. The entries submitted within a few hours (See #77 and #87 and maybe even #111) show what is possible, and clearly the painstaking layers upon layers, while indeed possible, are not needed to create a credible image. Bogie Wheel has set a high standard. I will let it fall upon others to award style points if the posters were indeed done while in pajamas.

I guess I am an old-timer here at BC as I do remember the Wretchard the Cat icon.

Oct 19, 2009 - 9:26 pm 131. M. Simon:

And what about the wolf? In a crossed circle.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:24 am 132. M. Simon:

Obama’s real problem:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/10/kudos_to_obama.html

In the comments:

Every single statement has an expiration date. Every one.
Phelps · October 19, 2009 11:16 PM

My response:

Phelps,

Yes. How true. How sad.

All he has to give is lies. How sad for him personally. He will never know love. Or even that for which he has traded love for: power.

Oct 20, 2009 - 5:32 am 133. Lifeofthemind:

JMH,
Sounds like a True Believer from the CJ fan club at LGF. Are they beginning to roam?
They have attempted to attack HotAir and he does rant against PJM.

Oct 20, 2009 - 6:35 am 134. JMH:

Sounds like a True Believer from the CJ fan club at LGF. Are they beginning to roam?
They have attempted to attack HotAir and he does rant against PJM.

What I find myself really wanting for the comment sections is a tag features that lets me (and others too…) tag a poster with what I think is relevant to me interpreting their comments. A sort of reputation system that releives a little of the tax on my brain keeping all the names straight.

Hmmm, I’ve been looking for a new app development challenge…

Oct 20, 2009 - 9:06 am 135. Lifeofthemind:

JMH,
Careful, that could easily become like the “Karma” feature at LGF. At first I thought it was harmless and took pleasure in my rising approval. Later it became an obvious feeding frenzy used by CJ to identify heretics. I have often wanted to “upding” a great comment on the BC but many people feel that particular feature is when LGF jumped the shark.

Oct 20, 2009 - 10:01 am

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.