Image

Semiotics in Action : Obama's Presidential Seal

And a big WTF!

We know that Barack Obama is a control freak when it comes to his image (the suits just tells you all you need to know). But honey, this is getting friggin' ridonculous. I mean, they have in Latin, "Yes We Can" (Vero Possumus).

I keep reading that as "Very Possum", so that's how "too much" that seal is.

My question is, who's the semiotician in his PR and communications team.

H/T Dave Winer, via Twitter

Image Courtesy of BarackObama.com at Flickr.


liza's picture

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Unattractive (Scary-looking!) Men Exploit Young Women and Use Public Airwaves to Do It

Of the ten beautiful, accomplished, championship athlete students labeled so vividly and unfairly by political radio host Don Imus, Heather and Katie aren't even African-American. Essence is a classical pianist. Half are freshmen (freshwomen? freshgirls?) just out of high school and by university policy are therefore considered not yet ready for media interaction.

THEY were labeled, these ten young women. Not a race, not a sex, sport or constituency. These particular, extraordinary and now extraordinarily visible young women. No one has apologized to them. Why should labeling them be a matter decided by a fight between Don Imus and Al Sharpton?

Imus could be in real danger if the outcry causes advertisers to shy away from him, said Tom Taylor, editor of the trade publication Inside Radio. The National Organization for Women is also seeking Imus' ouster.

Imus isn't the most popular radio talk-show host — the trade publication Talkers ranks him the 14th most influential — but his audience is heavy on the political and media elite that advertisers pay a premium to reach. Authors, journalists and politicians are frequent guests — and targets for insults.

He has urged critics to recognize that his show is a comedy that spreads insults broadly.


JJ Ross's picture

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What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


— WB Yeats's "Second Coming"as first printed in 1920


JJ Ross's picture

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