A Picture's Worth a Thousand Editorials
How the folks at the NY Times photo desk are making Bob Dole look bad -- literally
By ZEV BOROW
Bob Dole's unnerving countenance isn't exactly breaking news -- not even Leno and Letterman touch his tanned-cyborg looks anymore. What hasn't been commented on, however, is the way the The New York Times' photo department has accentuated Dole's lack of photogeneity. While the editorial side of the Times' campaign coverage has been generally even-handed, the photos the paper has chosen to run give evidence of what can only be interpreted as a stealthy but relentless assault on Bob Dole's image. Their modus operandi: bad pictures. Really, really bad pictures.
Like his rival Bill Clinton, Dole is photographed ad infinitum, and nowhere is his image as common as in the pages of the Times. But compared to the normal standards of Times photographs, its photos of Dole have been sloppy, irrelevant, irreverent and even downright malicious. From blurry or poorly composed shots, to candid takes of him looking mean, silly or pathetic, to full-scale pictorial sabotage, Times photo editors have taken every opportunity to screw with the image of Bob Dole.
After the doozy from the May '95 Times Magazine (shown above), the uglification campaign seems to have begun in earnest last November. The Times ran a prominent photograph of Dole seated with Newt and Marianne Gingrich at Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in Jerusalem. The Gingrichs were captured with furrowed brows and sincere, anguished expressions. Dole, in the foreground, was shown with eyes closed, chin cradled in palm, yarmulke precariously dangling from the top of his head, apparently snoozing. The caption made no mention of Dole's sleepy pose, but the picture just as easily could have run on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update."
The nation's biggest and most influential newspaper employs a small army of staff photographers and freelancers not to let Bob Dole out of its sight. Was the shot of him napping the only one available from the multi-hour ceremony in Jerusalem? Or was it just too much for the fellas at the photo desk to resist?
As Dole went about sewing up his party's nomination, the hits just kept coming. In April there was the photo of him slumped on a chaise lounge (phone to one ear) while on vacation in Florida. Though the American public is used to seeing the more portly Bill Clinton chugging along on a morning jog during his vacations, they could hardly have been ready for the ghastly image of Bob Dole in an oversized baseball cap and shorts that were far, far too short, working on that inimitable tan. Yikes.
Next month, the paper caught Dole at an anti-drug rally in Cincinnati standing beside a textbook donut-shop cop (bushy mustache and all) playing an electric guitar. Head down, face scrunched with the pain of forced enjoyment and left fist (the good one) delivering a terrifyingly lame rock n' roll punch, Dole looked like MTV roadkill.
Then, in June, readers were treated to Dole eating a pastry with Christine Todd Whitman at the Polish Heritage Festival in Holmdel, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the Kansan appeared to be sampling more of his thumb than any of this fun ethnic treat.
In most cases, the photos have been accompanied by a comparatively straight story and caption, a combination that's more than incongruous -- it's often comic. While photo editors are obliged to run their most interesting pictures, they are also supposed to uphold principles of fair reporting. In these cases, the accompanying articles were fairly objective, but the photos had the effect of blatant editorializing of the type that wouldn't be tolerated in the paper's writing. Meanwhile, the Times' photos of Bill Clinton, a man almost equally prone to looking goofy, were all three-piece suits and warm Southern smiles.
Most recently (July 2), the Times ran a front-page, above-the-fold photo of Dole campaigning on Atlantic City's boardwalk. At first glance, there seemed to be absolutely nothing wrong with the shot. Sporting a smile that could actually be called beaming, his good thumb up, Dole looked downright presidential. That is, if you overlooked the guy in the giant Planter's Peanut costume towering over him. The caption read: "Bob Dole campaigning . . . amid supporters and commercial interests." Too bad the entire day didn't yield even one worthy shot that didn't include a cameo by Mr. Commercial Interest, huh? (photo)
Other photos have been more subtly mischievous. They're mostly just plain old bad pictures, usually of Dole slightly blurry, off-center, or looking away, but they, too seem designed to make Bob Dole look like anything but the next President of the United States.
All of which adds up to one thing: The New York Times photo editors (who declined to comment for this story) have a lot to answer for. Unless, of course, that whole thing about liberals having no sense of humor is just another big joke.
Zev Borow is a San Francisco writer and senior editor of Might magazine.