The Iconic Image

UPDATE: Maureen Dowd of NYT fame just purloined my ebay idea! She even used it as her most clever closing idea! Sheesh.

I’ve been doing an informal poll with my friends and colleagues after the election about what they considered the most powerful image during the televised coverage election night. By far, the majority of those I ask come up with the same image, which was also mine. Some of them think quite long, and then come up with the image. Can you think of what it might be?

While you’re thinking, I’ll share an idea of mine about Sarah Palin’s shopping spree. If she wants to look good, and perhaps make a little coin off the whole thing, she should do what she says she is good at, and sell it off on eBay! I’m sure there are some poor rubes out in the rural confines of Real America who would pay even more than what Sarah paid for the clothes. They can wear it to the sewing bee or the barn raising, and say, “Sarah Palin wore this Escada in Ohio!”

Back to the iconic image. Figure it out yet?  The second most mentioned image was that of the two families on stage, the Obamas and the Bidens. And the first most mentioned image? Jesse Jackson weeping. It floored everybody, at least everybody who has the gene to read facial expressions. I found a Los Angeles Times blog on Jesse crying, and a lot of the comments were just snarky! (My favorite word learned during the election.) How they could think of his tears as strategic, or manipulative, just shows that they are the same people who ran down to the gun store and bought the last AK-47 on the rack. Jackson had kneeled by the dying Martin Luther King on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Forty years later, Jackson stood in Grant Park and watched an African American elected president of the United States. When they make the movie of Jackon’s life, I bet it begins in Grant Park.

Note: Yet another who agrees with me, Judith Warner of the NYT.