Karl rove practises the art of seizing control of the images and thus

[Veggie Meathead]

the conversations of the talking heads and op-ed writers favored by the Rightwing.This control of the images allows them to repeat lies with different surrogates so you cannot pin any one down as the sole source of the lies. It is also important for them to monopolize the time available for their stories to get aired. Between these, he concocts a plan of attack against our men in which it is not necessary to have truth,a clean record of service or a coherent plan to sell his candidate.In fact, the more disjointed or chaotic the conversation becomes the better his chances become.He will never allow his candidate to be pinned down on any substantive discussions on any issue. Making the American people afraid has already been accomplished, so his focus now will be to make them feel good about voting for a candidate that "stands tall and resolute, ready to strike against the evildorers".He will also mount a furious attack against Kerry painting him as weak and vacillating against these enemies.

At the same time that he wants to put out positive images of his man, he is also deathly afraid of seeing anything negative about him.This is why the Bush gang was in disarray when the pictures of Abu Ghraib came out. And their reaction predictably was to ban the use of cellphone cameras inside the prison.We need to saturate the airwaves with as many negative images of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice as possible.Anything will do, even actors need to be employed to reenact scenes, if the actual images are not available.

The power of images will decide this election.We should forget writing long essays about our plan for the future and concentrate on destroying the Republicans' chances by using TV images.

I think this is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he said"The Medium is the Message".

[acmavm]

1. The two most negative images that I can think of are also the two images

that best sum up the bush* experience. Coffins of American service people and the ugly horrible image of babies blown to hell by our bombs. But even though the second example I gave is just a realistic and true picture of what we are doing there, I just don't know if I would have the nerve to do it. I've seen some of them, and they just horrify me. The images never have faded from my memory. And that's why I know that there's a special place in hell for these asswipes in the bush* administration.

[Eric J in MN]

2. There are images of the results of the US bombing Iraq at

http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm