“I’m envious of [chief White House photographer Pete] Souza,” says former White House photographer David Hume Kennerly. “You couldn’t cast a situation better: an attractive couple, the first black president, two kids, the dog.”

Slate’s John Dickerson has an annotated slideshow of pictures from Obama’s Presidency which are hanging in the White House. While the pictures aren’t new (ED: see note at bottom), and are all publicly available via the White House website, there are some interesting quotes from official presidential photographer Pete Souza and David Hume Kennerly, who used to have the same job.

This is the first time that I’ve heard about the practice of putting up pictures of the President all around the working quarters of the White House. In fact the first picture in the slideshow shows Obama entering the WH “on his first day of work” and seeing pictures of his Inauguration from the day before, after the photo staff worked overnight “so that Obama wouldn’t face empty walls and lonely hooks in his new office.” Interesting, also said: “But the photographs aren’t just for the president. They’re for the staffers who don’t get to see him much. Those who are captured in a photograph with Obama—from White House stewards to speechwriters to journalists—get the thrill of being on public display.” A bit strange and even vane, and definitely in line with the ‘cult of personality’ critiques and warnings, but I’m also laughing a bit at the idea that they are surrounding the staff with pictures of their boss who they never get to see, in an effort for the team to feel closer to him? Note too that this has been a “long-standing presidential tradition” since Nixon.

UPDATE: I just got an email from the estimable John Dickerson himself correcting me when I said that these pictures had already been released and were publicly available. In fact they’re an exclusive to Slate. Cool for them, glad they’re dealing with photography a bit outside of their daily Magnum pictures feature.

We’ve always been fans of Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages website and have linked a few times, but I am very excited to see this new site pop up from rayogram called NEWScan. I know nothing about it, other than it displays neatly and efficiently 10 covers of the world’s largest/most influential papers. For an expat like me who doesn’t have any physical paper to read it is nice to see how things are looking around the world.

I suppose this sort of thing is legal, if the papers are releasing their PDFs already, but I can’t imagine this is sanctioned. Don’t really care, this is a nifty little tool. If my consumption is anything, there is still something to the importance of newspapers in their ‘old’ state. The navigation and heirarchy of a well designed front page is still something to behold. Probably past its prime, and I look forward to the day when someone comes up with something as navigable and efficient online.
(h/t John Dickerson of Slate.com and the Slate Gabfest, via facebook of all places. Be sure to check out his twitter which is my most favorite out there)

I don’t know when I started getting in to Doonesbury heavily, probably early in college, but I’ve become almost fanatic about Garry Trudeau’s work.. I have most of the anthologies and reread all of the time (often right before bed..). I swear, I’ve learned more about American history (well, mostly the politics) from the 1970s through present from Doonesbury than any other source. Iran Contra? Bork? the wonders of Dan Quayle? all detailed in dark hilarity in Doonesbury over the years. Trudeau even covers wars, in astonishing depth and respectability (he was the first cartoonist to win a Pulitzer!), and has received much attention for his portrayal of the current Iraq War .. where a main character loses a leg, a running storyline about sexual abuse in the military and I think once a year publishing all of the names of soldiers killed in battle.

Obviously, not your average cartoon.

Well, I meant to keep this short and just post a link to a funny ‘toon and leave it at that .. but maybe the extended info will convince you of checking out, and keeping up with, Doonesbury: The Daily Dose at Slate.com (an online magazine that does a number of wonderful things, including required podcast “The Political Gabfest”, more on that in a later post I’m sure)