This week, it seems to me, MSM’s bald and willful misinterpretation of Reid’s abuse of power with respect to Reid’s prevarication of Limbaugh’s is a great example of what Robert’s writing about. The powerful and important story is “the abuse of power and the prevarication by the senator” (quotes mine). The story, when it is mentioned, is spun without a mention of this.

The situation is portrayed rather as a publicity stunt by both Reid and Limbaugh. One must assume that the situation is not clarified by the press because showing the rectitude and cleverness of Limbaugh, and the base, inappropriate behavior (for a senator, actually senators) of a party hack just doesn’t perpetuate the liberal “myth” or kick the ball down the road for the Democrats.

Icons have always been part and parcel of narratives. Icons do not depict facts, they are ancient images that are intended to trigger emotions. Stripped of their connection to narrative, icons can begin to just look ridiculous.

Technology has given us powerful tools to create and disseminate narrative, and by the same measure tools to de-construct and criticize narrative.

An excellent example of the de-construction and critique is shown by these pages at zombietime.com which record the use of the MSM to disseminate narrative on behalf of Hezbollah during last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war.

I too am am a hyper-visual thinker. I can only spell a word if I can see a complete image of it in my head. Sometimes I can’t tell if a word is spelled correctly if I change the font it appears in. I never get lost and I can navigate to place I have only been to once years before. I like or dislike movies dependent almost wholly on their cinematography. I still watch cartoons and animation, often with the sound off, just so I watch the art go by.

However, secondary images are not visual input. They do possess an iconography just like painting or sculpture. As in any language, the listener supplies most of the information used in the communication based on the associations triggered by the “words”.

The cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words isn’t far off the mark. It might be better said that we hear a thousand words in our head when we see a picture. When we looked at a photograph we need to remain cognizant of who, or what, whispers in our ear.

But hey, I didn’t know any of the Chicagoboyz read the NYTimes! :)

We understand that cannot substitute the spoken and written word for our actual senses. We understand, if only intuitively, that words merely serve to trigger information we already carry around in our heads. If we don’t already have that information, then the words mean little.

We grasp that paintings and drawings, which originate wholly in the human mind, function as a type of language. All forms of visual art rely on certain conventions to trigger information carried in the viewer’s head. We often do not understand the significance of the visual art of other cultures. It often seems a jumbled collage of images meaninglessly juxtaposed to a foreigner but to a native it communicates a clear and artfully expressed message.

We don’t think of photographs as a type of language because the actual image itself never resides inside a human mind. We think of it not as form of communication from another human but rather as a frozen piece of reality. Yet, photos do have a language and the photographer chooses what the picture will say when he composes it. A photo lit from below says “sinister” A photo lit the direct right, says “dawn” or “beginning.” A photo lit from the direct left says “dusk” or “end.”

Photographers speak to us not only within each individual photo but also by which specific photos they show us. As one of the links above notes,

“The 12 or 14 negatives on that single roll of film, culminating in the moment of death for a Viet Cong, propelled Eddie Adams into lifelong fame,”

Photographers routinely toss away photos of the prominent that show them with their eyes half closed or their mouths slack.

Scientist developed detailed and rigors standards for scientific photography in an attempt to eliminate the human voice from photography so that we can use to freeze pieces of reality. Such photos look nothing like those we see in the news or art.

Photography is a language. Each photograph exist in a halo of whispers. We must discipline ourselves to hear them.

Getting interested in photography makes it easier to pick out staged photos as well. A person who is interested in photography AND knows something about the subject being photographed (military history and guns for example) is deadly to someone who is staging photos.

The most glaring example of this is the Iraq war. The number of staged photos, most obviously from “photographers” from the AP has been startling and at least is being pointed out in many corners of the blogosphere.

One of my favorites.