Where’s Hillary? Hasidic paper breaks the rules by editing Clinton out of White House photo
Hillary Clinton's expression, right hand clasped over her mouth in astonishment, is largely responsible for making the above photo iconic--and, to at least one newspaper, sexually suggestive.
In the photo, President Obama and his national security team are huddled around a conference table in the White House Situation Room, watching CIA director Leon Panetta narrate last Sunday's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. The mood is clearly tense.
When Women's Wear Daily consulted a coterie of photo editors and designers about why the image is "destined to be one for the history books," Clinton was foremost in their responses.
"The Hillary Clinton expression is the one that holds the photograph fully," Time's photo director told the magazine. "You can see 10 years of tension and heartache and anger in Hillary's face," Conde Nast's Scott Dadich agreed.
Turns out she was probably just coughing during that crucial moment captured by White House photographer Pete Souza. But nevertheless, the image still proved a bit too racy for at least one of the many newspapers that printed it.
That would be the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic broadsheet Der Tzitung, published in Brooklyn. The paper photoshopped Clinton, as well at the only other woman who could be seen in the room--Audrey Tomason, the national director of counterterrorism--out of the frame.
"Apparently the presence of a woman, any woman, being all womanly and sexy all over the United States' counterterrorism efforts was too much for the editors of Der Tzitung to handle," noted the prominent women's blog Jezebel.
Indeed, "The Hasidic newspaper will not intentionally include any images of women in the paper because it could be considered sexually suggestive," Rabbi Jason Miller explains in The Jewish Week. Though he notes that the publication's "fauxtograpphing" may in fact be a graver act against their religious tenets: "To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit)."
Beyond that, Der Tzitung's editors apparently missed or blatantly ignored the guidelines stipulated on the official White House Flickr page, where the photo was released for use by news organizations: "The photograph may not be manipulated in any way."
The White House has not issued a response on the altered image.
UPDATE: The editors of Der Tzitung have apologized to the White House for altering the photo and responded to the Wasington Post with a comment clarifiying their position:
"In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status... Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive."
* Disappear as in Photoshopped out of existence.
Personally, I consider this a gross violation of journalistic ethics. One reports the news, not edit it.
"If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."
"The captain claimed our people violated a 4,000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence. The subject did not survive interrogation."
Why did they even bother publish the photos in the first place? It wasn't as if doctoring someone as prominent as Hilary Clinton out of a photo soviet style would go unnoticed.
"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi
"Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes" - Covenant
"Over three million died fighting for the emperor, but when the war was over he pretended it was not his responsibility. What kind of man does that?'' - Saburo Sakai
Not to insult the good lady, but how could Hilary Clinton be sexually arousing?
But seriously, this is an outrage. They've not only violated the trust the population place in them, they have proven what a backward little rag they must be. Disgusting.
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?
- Raw Shark
Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent.
I think this also highlights why releasing photos of Bin Laden as "proof" would have been utterly worthless. Photos are simply too easy to fake these days.
It seems to me that this is but one case of manipulation of photographs among many. How many pictures in American news media displayed just how much blood and gore accompany war? Very, very few - the American news media generally limit their coverage of violence to cleaned-up bodies, not the horribly mutilated ones. How many times do the American media censor inappropriate words, or refuse to display naked bodies? It happens all the time. What we have here is a Jewish journal that has a different approach to censorship. It's ethically problematic, but not much more problematic than the other cases I just mentioned.
I'd say there's a significant difference between not showing certain photos and outright editing photographs. Both, I think, fall under bad or ethically problematic journalism, but the later is in all practical sense lying. It's disgusting that any news source would do such a thing, religious or not. It's one thing to not say or show everything that happened, and it's a whole new level of dishonesty when the truth is deliberately twisted or withheld.
I doubt they'd view it as deliberately twisting the truth - it could be argued that the readers of such an orthodox magazine would already expect that images of women would be removed, and that the distortion isn't made with deceitful intent. Especially since this has, as I've already mentioned, already happened before:
Orthodox Jewish newspapers remove women from Israel cabinet photo
Under ultra-Orthodox Jewish tradition, publishing pictures of women is considered a violation of female modesty. Two newspapers in Israel removed the faces of two female ministers from the photo of the new cabinet headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yated Neeman and Shaa Tova, two major ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers, removed the faces of the two female Ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver from the new cabinet photo. They published the altered photo in their daily news.
Yated Neeman newspaper, using digital photo software, replaced the two ministers with two men as shown in the link here.
Shaa Tova newspaper followed a different strategy -- they just blacked the women out.
Other Israeli newspapers were insulted by this alteration and posted both the original and the altered versions. One newspaper joked and put both the photos and added the headline “Find the lady”.
According to the BBC article, the ultra-Orthodox community has their own traditions separate to other Jewish communities in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox men wear a distinct attire of black hats, coats and sidelocks (payus), while the women wear long skirts and sleeves. They also pray three times a day and access Internet sites that do not have inappropriate content.
Wonder what the ultra-Orthodox newspapers’ response would be if Tzipi Livni had been elected as Prime Minister instead of Benjamin Netanyahu?
God save me from men attempting to "protect" me (or my modesty) by obliterating all traces of my existence!
Really, this is a case where there is no way NOT to offend someone. Either the ultra-orthodox will be offended by seeing >gasp!< WOMEN! or the rest of the world will be offended by the alteration of the record of an event.
The only thing remotely acceptable would be for them not to publish the photo at all, merely mention who was there.
On a personal level - I don't give a fuck why they're doing this, or what justification they have. In MY culture what they did was outrageously offensive! If they can't cope with the picture of a human female maybe they shouldn't have any pictures at all in their paper.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Broomstick wrote:On a personal level - I don't give a fuck why they're doing this, or what justification they have. In MY culture what they did was outrageously offensive! If they can't cope with the picture of a human female maybe they shouldn't have any pictures at all in their paper.
It always amuses me when such religious beliefs try to isolate women from men in daily life, either by encasing them head-to-toe in shapeless cloth (assuming they are even allowed outside of the home) or erasing them from photographs. Are these people so afraid of the opposite gender that they cannot control themselves? Do they walk the streets in constant dread of glimpsing sight of females? Maybe it's a like a severe peanut allergy and they can't even take a chance with a tiny bit of exposure. I wonder how such men even know what do with a woman on say, their wedding night? Perhaps there is a manual.
The irony, of course, is that such total isolation of the sexes goes a long way to encouraging just that sort of loss of control when the two are brought into contact, simply by virtue of lack of experience dealing with and controlling physical desire. Go self-fulfilling prophecies!
Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the poster. The thread topic winks out of existence and reappears in 1d10 posts.
Out of Context Theatre, this week starring Darth Nostril.
-'If you really want to fuck with these idiots tell them that there is a vaccine for chemtrails.'
FSTargetDrone wrote:Are these people so afraid of the opposite gender that they cannot control themselves? Do they walk the streets in constant dread of glimpsing sight of females? Maybe it's a like a severe peanut allergy and they can't even take a chance with a tiny bit of exposure. I wonder how such men even know what do with a woman on say, their wedding night? Perhaps there is a manual.
After reading this story elsewhere a woman commented on how she encountered a member of this religious group. He came into where she walked as a receptionist, and outright ignored her, refusing to even look at her or acknowledge her existence, even when she was asking how she could help. One of her male coworkers came out and had to deal with him.
FSTargetDrone wrote:Are these people so afraid of the opposite gender that they cannot control themselves? Do they walk the streets in constant dread of glimpsing sight of females? Maybe it's a like a severe peanut allergy and they can't even take a chance with a tiny bit of exposure. I wonder how such men even know what do with a woman on say, their wedding night? Perhaps there is a manual.
After reading this story elsewhere a woman commented on how she encountered a member of this religious group. He came into where she walked as a receptionist, and outright ignored her, refusing to even look at her or acknowledge her existence, even when she was asking how she could help. One of her male coworkers came out and had to deal with him.
That just strikes me as fucking awful.
Well, obviously women are dirty things only fit for having babies, don't you know. She should've known better than to try to hold a job that didn't involve keeping her barefoot.
and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention.
You are excluding a women from a photograph of men in government, thereby trying to deny a female has a place of power in a country! There is no excuse for this, and a pathetic little whine of 'we didn't mean to disparage women', doesn't wash with me.
Just the very act of doing this is both a disgusting example of misinformation, and an insult to half the human race.
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?
- Raw Shark
Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent.
"The Hasidic newspaper will not intentionally include any images of women in the paper because it could be considered sexually suggestive,"
So instead of teaching their male members the value of virtues like restraint and self-control the hasidic community rather pretends that the "temptation" doesn't exist. What's with the Middle East and this abject prudery? Muslim fundamentalists hide women under tents for the same reason.
People at birth are naturally good. Their natures are similar, but their habits make them different from each other.
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Saddam’s crime was so bad we literally spent decades looking for our dropped monocles before we could harumph up the gumption to address it
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O God, please don't let me die today, tomorrow would be so much better!
-Traditional Spathi morning prayer
Come to think of it, this makes me wonder what the hell they would have done if Clinton had clinched the Presidency. Just not publish any photos of the new Commander-in-Chief for four or eight years?
"The Hasidic newspaper will not intentionally include any images of women in the paper because it could be considered sexually suggestive,"
So instead of teaching their male members the value of virtues like restraint and self-control the hasidic community rather pretends that the "temptation" doesn't exist. What's with the Middle East and this abject prudery? Muslim fundamentalists hide women under tents for the same reason.
This is sadly the logical conclusion of what happens after several hundred years of saying "All men are wicked and lust after women unconditionally" You can see the same thing in the Arab world where you get people saying "We lock women away inside houses and cover them in burkas, not because we are against women, but we do it for their own protection!!!"
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
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If it's the men who can't control themselves why not lock the men up instead? Oh, right - that would inconvenience the menfolk.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Presumably because they assume they would have to lock away the majority of the menfolk, which really would be inconvenient. Though giving women the keys for a change might be a fun reversal of the power dynamic.
So... to avoid locking up a majority of the menfolk they lock up ALL of the womenfolk? And you somehow think that's not inconvenient? I know they don't, but they don't know any better.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Broomstick wrote:If it's the men who can't control themselves why not lock the men up instead? Oh, right - that would inconvenience the menfolk.
Quite. And I don't know about any other guys on this board, but I'm actually somewhat insulted by the implication that I'd force myself on a woman with any amount of provocation, much less seeing any part of her below the neck or above the ankle.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Yeah, I've had a few arguments with that sort, about how it's only done to "protect" women and to "respect" them, and not being part of their culture I don't understand.
I point out to them that I find it appalling that in their culture men have so little self-control, but of course, my opinion is meaningless. But seriously, if they can't control themselves why should they be trusted with any responsibility whatsoever?
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Arguably the initial intent was to protect women, though in a context where the women were still seen as property to a certain extent and they were being protected in order so secure their value to their "proper" owners. In the Islamic world, it seems the real requirements initiated in the Quran are not nearly as restrictive as later tradition made it out to be, but as Simon Jester pointed out elsewhere, those in charge of the Muslim world are not that interested in Quran-as-revolutionary-social-document pointing the way to a more just and egalitarian society, because then they would have to give up their palaces, harems, and claims to absolute interpretive authority and go out to educate themselves and make sure everyone has equal access to education, employment, and justice.
Of course, if protecting women were the true motivation, they would be willing to submit to chastity belts for men. Or perhaps the men could be confined to domestic spheres and public business would only be conducted by women interacting with other women. Men out in public without proper restraints and female oversight would be stoned for their obviously nefarious intent. Perhaps the men are afraid that if women ran things, they would see that men are not as essential to running public business as the men would like to believe.
Back to the newspaper article, though, it's clearly insane, but is it of consequence? The only practical effect I can see is to further insulate the members of the community from having to acknowledge that women can have positions of equal power with men. Otherwise, I don't see what influence the pet paper of a radical religious sect that wants to isolate itself from modern reality has.
Broomstick wrote:Yeah, I've had a few arguments with that sort, about how it's only done to "protect" women and to "respect" them, and not being part of their culture I don't understand.
I point out to them that I find it appalling that in their culture men have so little self-control, but of course, my opinion is meaningless. But seriously, if they can't control themselves why should they be trusted with any responsibility whatsoever?
Speaking as a Conservative (rather than Orthodox) Jew, I can tell you that pretty much any other member of the other Jewish sects will happily agree with you that the Orthodox are lying their asses off - or at the very least, blinding themselves because it's what they grew up with.
