Letters to the Editor
Number Six
Published Letters: 127 Editor's Choice: 2
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@jebldmm
[Read the article: With Obama on the offensive, the Democratic campaigns trade attacks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, point by point
1) Still haven't shown me any major piece of legislation that Clinton has written in seven years. You can point to it be the fault of the republicans, as so many of Clinton's shortcomings seem to be, but that won't fly. She still hasn't done anything in seven years of any real import.
Obama has a bill on ethics reform, and a non Proliferation bill.
2) Actually Obama never said he was going to stop supporting NAFTA either. He wants to renogatiate to better protect industrial jobs. Just as Clinton has stated.
The issue is not the stands of the candidates. The issue is how the actions of the Clinton aides somehow were attributed to the Obama aide.
Obama screwed up in the initial response to this, but I think that really just means he didn't know his advisor talked to anyone at the Canadian embassy and the guy wasn't speaking for his campaign anyway. And his adviser in any case never said all the talk about renegotiating was just political manuvering; it was Clinton's people who did.
3) I read the factcheck.org twice just to make sure. They don't really debunk anything. I am not a total video geek, but I do work with it a good deal and know enough to know that they don't. If you want to alter the color to compensate for a bad video signal, why did it come out blacker, especially when they also say at points that candidates on youtube seem to come through their codec more pale? I quote:
-In our experience posting videos to our Just the Facts feature, conversion to Flash format drives up contrast and reduces the mid-range color values that are frequently found in flesh tones and facial detail. We've noticed that Obama, and other candidates, appear drained of a bit of their color in some of our videos after they've been processed for posting.
If it was purely the color was darker, and only on youtube, fine, there might be nothing there. But put it on top of the widening of the face to flatten out his nose (something they didn't mention) as well as the fact that the image is on her website darker and flatter as well, not just on youtube, then it simply is not an unintentional mistake.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/5/131156/5021/187/469677
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it was intentional
[Read the article: Was Obama's skin darkened for Clinton ad?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Clinton campaign darkened his skin, and widened his face to exaggerate his features and make him look more black. One of those things happening to the picture I might accept as unintentional, but not both. Its really strange to try and claim that it was not done intentionally yet lo and behold, it just sorta happened.
I know enough about video editing to know that alterations like these two don't just happen. And if they do, you FIX THEM. The Clinton campaign can claim all they want that it was just a codec or file transfer issue, but that is a joke, and anyone who has ever used an editing system for any length of time pretty much knows this.
I don't think it was done exactly for racist reasons. Not exactly. It's a tried and true tactic in attack campaigns to subtly alter photos of your opponent if you use one. Make them paler, skinnier, make their eyes a little larger, their eyebrows menacing, things like that. In an attempt to make them look sick, or weak, or scary. Pay close attention when the state election commercials come along in a few months. There'll be at least one race in your area where someone does something like this.
So in one sense, what Clinton did to Obama's image is nothing new. Its not very common in Presidential races, because its kind of cheap and petty for the highest office in the land.
The thing of it is, instead of sucking the color out of his skin, or squeezing the image which would have made his cheeks look hollow and him overall kind of sickly, they actually darkened him and broadened his face. Which is oddly the total opposite of what you would normally do. You don't make someone look scary or sickly by giving their face color and making them look a little pudgy.
That is, unless you think black people are scary.
So the Clinton campaign was not saying something racist; but they are preying on subtle racist sentiments, even some subconscious racism in white middle class voters.
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I'm sorry Smith...
[Read the article: Was Obama's skin darkened for Clinton ad?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I actually DO VIDEO EDITING. I apologize for talking from ACTUAL EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE.
Just because you don't want to admit after sixteen years of dirty tricks and sleazy tactics that the Clintons have no ethics and nothing is beneath them you really shouldn't take it out on others.
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Smith...
[Read the article: Was Obama's skin darkened for Clinton ad?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know if factcheck is in the bag. I honestly doubt it. But I can tell from what they said that they don't know enough about video to have any authority. I've read their article several times to make sure of that.
They say, for example:
...our analysis of the Obama frames, using Photoshop, shows a fairly uniform darkening of the entire image including the backdrop. It is not just Obama's skin color that's affected.
The simple fact that they do not realize that that observation means nothing shows they don't understand video editing. Nobody in their right mind would go through the effort of isolating just his face when darkening the image. Do you have any idea the amount of work needed to isolate a constantly moving set of pixels (ie his face) just so you can alter them to leave a barely seen background the same? Do they have no clue just what that would take if you were stupid enough to do it that way? They prove nothing with this observation and don't even know it.
But fine, you don't want to believe someone who actually has video editing programs on his computer, who uses them on video projects, go right ahead.