War Room Photo

In the infinity of analysis following Sunday’s killing of Osama bin Laden, one thing I find interesting is the interpretation of this now-famous photo of President Obama and his security staff watching in real time the attack on bin Laden’s compound:

Most commented on about this photo is the expression of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her hand over her mouth – is she about to gasp? cry? barf? The usually more level-headed Joan Walsh describes her in Salon as “beyond anguished; her hand is over her mouth, her eyes red-rimmed.” She describes Obama as “grim” and Biden as “stricken,” the military leaders (I only see one, and he’s looking at his laptop screen) as “granite-faced,” and the civilian leaders “grimacing.” This kind of psychological analysis of photographs is silly at best (and Walsh is not at all the only one), particularly the attempt to ascribe different thought or demeanor to each of the individuals. To me, the most that can be said is that everyone in that room is (thankfully for us all) serious, grim, focused. I certainly don’t see Clinton as “beyond anguished.” Her posture, her hand over her mouth, is much like mine in any number of department meetings over the years where little more than the distribution of travel money or the recycling of paper is at issue, not the killing of the world’s #1 terrorist. And maybe my computer doesn’t have the resolution of Walsh’s, but I can’t at all make out her “red-rimmed” eyes (any more than Robert Gates’ on her left (arms crossed in anguish?)). This projection of one’s own desires and biases as interpretation is much too common in today’s media. The cliché that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is just that, a cliché. Sometimes – maybe most often – a picture is just a picture. And any words can only distort it.