Wonkette
Annie Liebovitz will photograph literally anyone, as long as they are marginally famous. Ever since Watergate she has taken portraits of schlubby double-chinned Administration staffers, so as to glorify the current President and reassure the nation that, while power changes hands occasionally, it transfers cleanly from one self-satisfied bureaucrat to the next.
Her latest series on key Obama administration figures raises a very important question: Do we really need to see what any of these dorks look like? And more importantly, why would any of these dorks assume we want to look at them? They obligingly stood for their portraits in the New York Times Sunday magazine a few weeks back, and far be it from any of them to turn down a session with the Great Annie Liebovitz, but jesus christ. America is interested in precisely four (4) people involved in the Obama administration: Barack, Michelle, and their kids. That is all. The halo of glamour does not extend to Steven Chu.
Portfolio: Enter Obama [Vanity Fair]
Why is Janet Napolitano feeling herself up?
Hillary: Bringin up the rear, per usual.
Didn’t Steven Chu win a Nobel Prize? I think that’s pretty glamorous. Ken Salazar, on the other hand…
Did any of them pose draped in just a sheet and sultry look?
When their parents left the room, Annie Liebovitz made them take off their clothes and pose draped in a sheet.
Texan Bulldoggette: Breast Health is no laughing matter. Make self exams and mammograms part of your routine!
Wake me when they’re all hugging naked, a la John and Yoko.
Don’t you want to see the face of the people who are about to buttfuck you?
Texan Bulldoggette: No other takers?
Purple Tide: she looks as if she has had some work done, too. In the face/neck area.
Susan Rice is looking good.
Texan Bulldoggette:
Cause she’s excited about Geithner playing pocket pool next to her…
two balls in the corner pocket!
O.K., I know Salazar is from Colorado, but he looks really stupid in that hat. It’s not like he’s got to get on his horse and herd them dogies, with his trusty six-shooter to fend off the injuns or anything like that.
Do politicians from Iowa dress up like farmers? Do politicians from California pose in shorts and sleeveless t-shirts?
He might get away with the bolo, on casual weekends, but he really doesn’t need to take fashion tips from John Cornyn.
Texan Bulldoggette: “Why is Janet Napolitano feeling herself up?”
She is trying to disrupt Geithner’s pocket pool game.
FIXXXX!
Theodorick Of York:
ACCCH beat me to it
Some nice enough photos, but what the hell are “press wranglers” and “news monitors” doing in this lineup? And is Ken Salazar’s tie what got Andy Card all hot and bothered about “disrespecting the office”?
Annie is either two steps above or two steps below (a) the guy in the old-timey photographer’s outfit and antique camera who snaps your picture with your mistress at a 4-star hotel; (b) the person who photographs horrified families as they are plunged down the final descent on the Wild Mountain Log Ride at CrappyWorld.
gurukalehuru: His family has been ranchers in CO for something like 5 generations, he grew up on the ranch, and he wears that hat EVERYwhere to prove he actually is a cowboy and can cut the balls off cows. Or something like that. In the pics from the Inauguration, you can see him in the crowd around Hopey–well, you can see the big-ass hat.
I cannot believe I am going to say this, but that is actually a really nice picture of Hillary. I hate this Hope thing. It makes me like people.
Also, Rahm looks hot. Also.
Annie Liebowitz cashed in whatever creativity she had a long time ago and now does high end glamour shots. This is a fact.
bigshots. they’re all the same.
SKS: You know, of course, that this post will be dredged up and giggled over endlessl7 after YOUR Annie Leibowitz portrait shows up in Vanity Fair.
What i wouldn’t give to be Ben Finkenbinder,
or Rahm’s desk.
I think the whole point of this exercise is to make conservative southerners freak out about how many girls and coloreds there are in this group; this group that is now operating the levers of power in our nation. Daschle missed a big opportunity to contribute to this effect by not wearing his faggy-looking red glasses.
The trick now is to get those conservatives to open a Vanity Fair.
I think Tim Geithner is the secret lovechild of Tony Blair and SNL’s Seth Meyers. Liebovitz asked him about his taxes right as this was snapped.
Robert Gates is really short. Really short.
Why doesn’t anyone have the heart and/or guts to tell Leibovitz she’s fucking terrible now?
(And by now I mean, for the last 20 years, at least)
gurukalehuru: Good point. Plus, a “sleeveless T-shirt” is really not a T-shirt at all, in that its sleeves and body do not in anyway form the letter “T.” It should be called by its correct name: “wife-beater.”
And anyway, Salazar is not (yet) as irritating as that turncoat jerk Ben “Nighthorse” Campbell, who was mostly Portuguese but parleyed his 1/256th Cheyenne heritage into ersatz authenticity with that ridiculous middle name. Or not as irritating as “Olympia Snowe,” whose name sounds like an ice-goddess but is, as quick look at her picture will reveal, a Greek.
Doglessliberal: Damn, I wouldn’t mind gettin’ into some domestic policy (if you know what I mean) with that MELODY BARNES, director, Domestic Policy Council. (Photo
She’s a hottie, and I think Wonkette would be loathe to be slack in their coverage of the Domestic Policy Council for the next 4 years or so.
Where were the nuddy pics? Or the scandalous posing? Couldn’t they show more skin?
The halo of glamour definitely extends to Frodo, I mean, Rahm. I mean, Frodo.
Judging from body language, we can deduce that the Obama Administration is one quarter people having angry, dirty thoughts; half people playing pocket pool, and one quarter narcissists groping themselves. Sounds just perfect for DC!
Lascauxcaveman: That’s (photo 8_ )
Also.
Also note the “press wranglers” in Slide 10 of 15. Samantha Tubman can wrangle me any time.
5: Rahm. I blogged the words “Rahm Emmanuel slash fic” just to see if I’d get google search hits. I do.
Thanks for nothing, Wonkette. This is pathetic. Annie Liebovitz will obviously photograph anything. Including Michael Steele getting chili-dogged by his dog. These ugly people deserve neither their photograph taken nor it being published in any magazine not called Ugly People’s Photographs. Uck. and Ugh. Also. Barf. Smug fucks piss me off. Especially Ken “Nighthorse” Salazar. Nice hat, twunt. Once again showing the spinelessness of Democrats as obviously no one has ever summoned the spine to tell him how motherfucking stupid he looks. I hope Daschle gets thrown under the bus just so he’ll look stupid for appearing in these garish photos. My eyes bleed unicorn milk. Ack.
I really love that she used a wind machine for Caroline Kennedy. I just wish she would have done the same for Valerie Jarret. It could have added some much-needed life to that Blago wig she’s wearing.
Those of us not in the DC area, and hence not in the know, need these pics as a “spotter’s guide” so we can email hot tips to Wonkette about bizarre behavior. Vry imprtnt!
So, actually, somebody photoshop-y should cut and paste onto handy flashcards with the names on the back for quizzing. Blingy optional.
hobospacejungle: dude, go light a doobie. You need to chill. Just don’t do it in Kenya.
Shouldn’t these people be working or something?
@joeyratz: that news monitors photo only served to make me wonder why the hell i don’t have a job working for barry, since apparently everyone else does.
Daschle looks really, really happy about what he’s dong with his right hand.
Honest, if she had given each subject the chance to butch up with an eyepatch, a knife between the teeth, two big machine guns and a bandolier of bullets, I bet most of these people would have done it.
hobospacejungle: pay no attention to dogless. I thought your post was hilarious.
V572625694: LOLOLZ WIN!!!
She’ll never top her portrait in VF a bazillion years ago that made John Major look majorly hot. Srsly.
Uncle Al: OK, so his joking is OK but mine is to be taken seriously?
The press wranglers should be wearing Salazar hats, for authenticity.
Where’s Reggie Love?
#4 “I’m an artist…now stand on the white X’s!”
Doglessliberal: No, I was kidding you too… The irony gets 3 layers thick around here…
Waht? No Janet Napolitano bare backed covering herself up with a sheet. Where is the “Change you can Believe in”, Obama?
Sure everyone has noticed Turbo Tax Tim playing pocket pool (I myself wish I was playing with him) but no one noticed his Spock like eyebrows. Very Divine….DIVINE!!
Is the Leibovitz -> Liebovitz thing some kind of a joke? Maybe even a SNARK? Or am I just being stupid for not getting it.
What really offends me is the poor Photoshop work. VF should be able to afford someone decent to comp together all the different pics in front of a nondescript background, but this is awful.
Uncle Al: goddamit. I need a doobie, I guess.
I THINK I get what Annie Liebovitz did here. they’re supposed to look like they’re in meetings (or “doing what they normally do”) but in totally generic settings. you know, to juxtapose the historic weight of their positions with an USWeekly, “They’re Just Like Us!” feel…transparency! or something.
it’s so subtle that I’d almost think Ms. Leibovitz didn’t have a concept at all until I realize she is such a GENIUS that even this non-concept concept was totally high concept.
plus! it saved her a lot of scheduling conflicts–when she could have taken less awkwardly posed and more nuanced photos when people are actually at ease and/or working to fix everything.
Did Stephen Chu pose naked? Annie has a habit of getting her subjects to strip down, and I’ve always wanted to get that guy down to at least his boxers.
Texan Bulldoggette:
Because she is thinking bout you.
WHEN I THINK ABOUT YOU I TOUCH MYSELF!
Doglessliberal: Uncle Al: I love you guys!
OffTheRecord: Re: Hillary, I know, good picture, right? Liebowitz is so good that Hillary looks like I’d only need maybe two, three beers.
holy scraping the barrel — she even corralled the kids that obama pays to read the newspapers.
Rahhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm
i like the irish dude.
Uh-oh. I think Wonkette fibbed. What about crazy Joe and his “fake” Lieber Herren Doktor Professor Wife, Jill? Aren’t people interested in them? Wonkette is interested in them. Especially crazy supertrain Joe, to provide evil and insulting snarky post material that will offend Li’l Denbers.
Joe needs to up the gaffe rate, though. He’s been very quite and behaved.
I wish the UN ambassador was named Samantha Power.
Before the photos were taken, did anybody ask these people if they paid their fucking taxes?