The pair of photos of Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright displayed with today’s TMP story “Obama: ‘This Is Not A Crackpot Church’“ appear to have been chosen with the goal of making the two men look as similar as possible. The effect is even more dramatic in the March 22nd story on the Time Magazine page, where the posture and facial expressions are very well matched. See: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1724976,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics .

The not-so-subtle message is that the two men are the same. Have the same views. Images have powerful effects, and I think we need to be very careful how we use them. (I thank Lori Blinderman for pointing out this feature of these images.)

PS I note that the photos now seem to have been removed from the TPM story.