Thread: Absurdity: Media Re-Brand Obama as Kennedy-Like With Photo

That’s it. There is no intention to pretend at being J.F.K.

Absurdity: Media Re-Brand Obama as Kennedy-Like With Photo

By Warner Todd Huston
Friday, September 4, 2009



Perhaps it is the Brit’s unseemly penchant to slobber over royals, but a recent photo of President Obama has elicited that ever-so-common, shop-worn, knee-jerk royalesque response in the media over there. (Yes, it’s a words-with-dashes sort of day)

The photo of the president at his Oval Office desk while daughter Sasha playfully spies on him from behind a couch has caused the Brit media to raise comparisons to the famous photo of J.F.K at his desk as little John, John plays under it.

At least three British news sources and one Australian outlet absurdly claimed that the Obama photo “invokedâ€

Obamas captured in Kennedy-like Oval Office photo

An unusual and yet strangely familiar image of life intruding into the Oval Office has been captured by a White House photographer.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 10:19PM BST 02 Sep 2009


President Barack Obama's daughter Sasha hides behind the sofa as she sneaks up on him at the end of the day in the Oval Office Photo: PETE SOUZA / WHITE HOUSE As Barack Obama looks through papers, his eight-year-old daughter, Sasha, spies on him from behind a sofa.

The photograph, released by the White House, was taken by Peter Souza, whose brief is to document the Obama presidency.

Mr Obama has said that one of the greatest benefits of working in the White House is having his family living in the same building.

Despite its spontaneous feel, the image evokes obvious – and possibly intentional - comparisons with famous pictures of a three-year-old John F Kennedy Jr playing under the same desk as his father sat working at it.

The photographs were taken a month before President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963.

Earlier this year, the White House released pictures showing Mr Obama, watched on by Caroline Kennedy, peering into the same section of the desk from which her young brother looked out 46 years ago.

The boy would often play under the desk – presented by Queen Victoria to President Rutherford Hayes – and liked to pretend that its kneehole panel was a secret door.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... photo.html