The latest theme among the punditry–and once again, one serving conservative interests–is that Barack Obama is a silver-tongued, spell-binding, mesmerizing, messianic orator whose powerful rhetoric is creating a cult of personality. (They really are saying this.) Charles Krauthammer is the latest to weigh in, although largely to summarize his colleagues’ profound insights. One might think it would be an understandable response if the current president had been a model policy-maker, but that obviously is not the case. And it wasn’t that long ago when conservatives were telling us that Ronald Reagan ought to be celebrated for how he made us believe, after the doldrums of the Carter years, that it was “Morning in America.” That message of hope has been conveniently forgotten, it seems. So what’s up?

The convention of capable writers attacking eloquent speakers goes all the way back to Plato. In brief, the cautionary note against demagoguery is an important warning in any democracy, but one often used on behalf of oligarchic interests. And there are two very important considerations: whether the charge is correct in the particular case, and what the alternative is. Furthermore, it can be difficult for some people to tell the difference between bombast and eloquence, and the alternative often gets a pass as one assumes that other speakers with different styles are somehow more substantive, or those with less ability are nonetheless adequately effective.

But those are not the problems we have at the moment. No, the problem is that the currently regnant ideological regime has acquired enormous power, influence, and wealth through the politics of fear. No wonder they now are afraid. Obama isn’t just an orator, but his oratory has done something far more important than enchant his audiences. He has given voice to a new, rightly hopeful America that already exists. If you want to see them, take a look:

These are faces in a crowd that was listening to Obama last month in South Carolina. I liked this photograph the moment I saw it. That response is cued by the smiles in the center of the frame, but by more as well. To the extent that faces can tell the story, these people aren’t just watching, they are listening and responding, and actively so. They are not being snowed but rather attending intelligently and liking what they hear. They are in a good mood because they are responding in kind to a speaker who respects them enough to appeal to their intelligence and their belief in a good society. They are neither stupid nor poor, nor vulnerable to a demagogue because of that. But that is not the whole of it.

The profound beauty captured in this photograph is that they are comfortable with one another. Black and white, young and middle-aged, Southerners all, they are pressed together and yet each is completely at ease. The good vibe comes not from seeing Obama’s luster reflected in their faces, but from who they already are individually and together. This is the America that has been emerging, however fitfully, in that last twenty years. This is the America that wants to hope and deserves a president who can recognize and respect and strive for all that hope represents.

The Krauthammer column appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Presidents Day. The Republican claim to be the “party of Lincoln” became ever more strained with the the continuation of Nixon’s “Southern strategy” throughout the Karl Rove era. Now it appears that it was not enough to abandon Lincoln’s vision of America; his eloquence has to be rejected as well. But let us not forget the challenge he has set before us forever. Politics may not be able to escape vicious partisanship, but it should not succumb to it, and the highest calling of the political leader is to bring people to respond to their common problems by drawing on what is good and true within each of us. As Lincoln knew:

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Photograph by Jim Wilson/New York Times. You can read all of Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address here.

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Question: is an icon one or many? On the one hand, an icon is supposed to be unique, representing the singular achievement, the ne plus ultra of a field of human endeavor. Michael Jordan is an icon, not Scottie Pippen or many other top-tier players. Babe Ruth, not Hank Aaron or Sammy Steroid. Einstein and Picasso, not Bohr and Braque. The Mona Lisa, not . . . Well, that gets to the other hand, which is that the icon is iconic because it is widely distributed, something that may have become distinctive through constant reproduction regardless of individual merit. Thus, the icon appears to be both singular and the latest iteration of a series, both unique and the characteristic instance of a type. Nobody understands this better than Madonna:

Here she is posing with actress Holly Weston at a publicity shoot for their movie “Filth and Wisdom.” The combination of title and double image invites snide remarks, but that’s taking the cheap bait. I like the photo because of how it captures Madonna’s genius for making herself heir to all the blondes produced by the Hollywood dream factory. We have realized since Warhol’s Marilyn series that the blonde du jour is performing a type, but Madonna makes that a virtue rather than a dirty little secret.

This photograph captures the visual iteration beautifully. Madonna is in focus and set forward at the head of a series. The younger woman is somewhat fuzzy, as if still in the process of formation. They seem to be perfectly sequenced in space and time, the one rightly receiving the spotlight that eventually will be on her successor. Above all, each is one of a series that can extend indefinitely–and will, as all that is required is processes of reproduction that obviously are well in place. Image, publicity, bone structure are all a sure thing. The “mechanical reproduction” of the camera replicates the culture machine and genetic mechanism alike.

According to Walter Benjamin, mechanical reproduction destroyed the “aura” of the individual work of art as well as its relationship to tradition. Absent this anchoring in “ritual,” artistic production becomes politicized. For all his brilliance, Benjamin’s observations can get in the way of understanding how culture depends on constant iteration of visual forms. To see this, one might shift from fine art to vernacular practices and pagan rituals, like this one:

You are looking at a photo from this year’s annual convention of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas. If there is a rival organization of Fake Bearded Santas, I haven’t heard of it. This group meets every year in Southern California, which no doubt it just the place for letting your hair down after the Christmas rush.

I get a kick out of this image for several reasons. Their easy association with ritual is mirrored in their behavior for the camera, where they all lean together and smile on cue for the group snapshot. The photographer may have asked for a big “Ho Ho,” but they probably smile easily. We also can smile at the few outliers in the group: the Lord of the Rings afficiando in the front right, and the wary ball cap guy in the left rear. The real comic effect, however, comes from the photo being a study in duplication. Santa Claus should be a single, iconic figure, and he is–but only because there are Santa Clones in every department store in the country.

And so we get to the dog show. To get some distance from Benjamin’s anxiety about the mass media, we might consider how it is that humans are continually reproducing images of visual iteration. Like this:

These are Old English Sheepdogs lined up for judging at the Westminster Dog Show. I won’t doubt that each of these dogs are individuals, but the photograph highlights their species identity and regimented styling. The most distinctive Old English Sheepdog will be the perfect iteration of the type, which stands behind that dog in a long series issuing from the twined processes of nature and culture.

Despite the attempt by these photographs to put a good face and good vibe on cloning, I’ll bet that the anxiety about mechanical reproduction remains. Celebrity culture, vernacular culture, subculture, all are exercises in the reproduction of the same. Cloning isn’t something that emerges unbidden from modern technology, but rather one more instantiation of something humans do all the time. If you don’t like it, there still is reason to blame the camera, which is both an apparatus of reproduction and a means for naturalizing cloning. But I wouldn’t, for these images and others offer more than apparatus and ideology. They are how we see ourselves as we are, seriatim.

Photographs by Markus Schreiber/Associated Press, Karen Tapia Andersen/Los Angeles Times, and Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

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The last week’s online slide shows have been full of energetic images from the primary campaigns, striking images from Mardi Gras and the Brazilian Carnival, heartrending images of violence from around the world, and all too familiar images of ordinary people digging out from the latest snowstorm. None of these touched me quite like this one:

You are looking at a procession of mourners from a village in Kashmir. They are carrying the body of a man killed by an avalanche. Heavy snows have killed a number of villagers and driven hundreds from their homes. These are Muslim mourners living in that portion of Kashmir controlled by India, but the political geography seems irrelevant. The snow is no respecter of prejudices, while the thick white cover seems to nullify all boundaries.

The snow also is slowly burying the houses while making walking very difficult. The mourners are strung along the one narrow path the winds through the barren scene. Wrapped up against the cold, they seem to share a deep separateness as if each were lost in thought. The one bulge in the line comes in the middle, where you can see that several mourners are carrying the dark coffin. The yellow buildings in the background promise the warmth and comforts of village life, but death sets the tone for this winter day.

The poignancy of the image may come also from its resemblance to another winter’s scene:

This is a copy of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting, “Hunters in the Snow.” Completed in 1565, this masterpiece also features a somber procession of villagers within a drear winter landscape. The contrast between the vitality of the village and those in the procession is stronger than in the photograph, but tired hunters and their slow-moving dogs evoke a shared fatality where all species have to struggle against the inertia of nature to survive. They are lucky: even if the hunt was in vain, the are returning to a village that is doing well. Their little band will be warmed and fed as it is absorbed back into the community to rest and revive for another day.

There are other differences as well, but the two images share a vision of how the human community exists precariously within nature’s cold, impersonal, relentless mortality. The continuity of painting and photograph suggests something else as well. If the photo seems to look backwards, as if the Kashmiri villagers were still walking through a premodern tableau, the painting reminds us that the passage of time offers no escape from the human condition. In fact, one can image the photograph as a scene from a century to come, when humans regularly walk slowly through barren landscapes to bury their dead.

But that is getting ahead of the story. It’s been a hard winter for many people this year, and Christians are in the season of Lent, a dark, cold time defined by failure and loss. I find it fitting that a profoundly Lenten image is one of Muslim mourners, and strangely reassuring that an image of winter is one not of vexing inconvenience but rather of stillness and community.

Photograph by Farooq Khan/European Pressphoto Agency.

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Those familiar with the Western Christian liturgical calendar (both of you) will know that today is the beginning of Lent. The papers are full of street scenes from Mardi Gras: performers in outlandish costumes along with spectators reveling in the temporary disruption of routine and rationality provided by the carnival. Few of those at the party may know that they could find that year round in a church. The Episcopal church, for examnple:

This photo was taken at the installation of a bishop in Chicago a few days ago. I think it’s a hoot: despite the solemnity of the participants, they might as well be on a float in New Orleans. The church may have bestowed specifically Christian meaning on every item of dress and decor, but since the crozier is whited out it is easy to see that the women could just as well be in a Druid or Roman or any other “pagan” ceremony. Chastely covered, chanting rhythmically, carrying phallic symbols, they might as well be Vestal Virgins. For all I know, the Zorastarians also might identify. In any case, they are maintaining a symbolic hierarchy of older women bearing colors and the sacred text, and younger women in white serving as acolytes. Some things never change, I guess. And that’s not the half of it. Take a look at this:

This guy could be at the center of the parade. He’s the new bishop. He looks like a little boy playing king. And, of course, he is dressing up, in a form of play, as something that he is not. He sits on a throne surrounded by those courtiers favored enough to be in his presence. Two races and two genders are represented but age is regnant and a white guy rules. Most important, however, he has adopted the regalia of a premodern monarch, a temporal king, seemingly without hint of irony.

And there is more irony than you might think. The story of this installation is that he is a gay-friendly bishop–a progressive on the battle line that is breaking the Anglican Communion apart. And so this post about an infrequent, highly ceremonial, obviously extraordinary performance of church ritual can’t avoid the deep questions. Why is it that, in a world crying out in pain, the mainline churches today are consumed with the question of who gets to be a member of their club? And who are they to tell people how to appear in public, when their leaders go in drag as if they were medieval kings? Why are we supposed to be reverent when they dress up in robes and crowns, but appalled when two men hold hands?

Lent is to be a time of reflection. In that spirit, I should acknowledge that my reaction to the liturgical costumes reflects a Protestant theology and aesthetics. And, of course, hypocritically so. Some Protestant clergy still don medieval robes on Sunday, as do academics once a year for commencement, so I can’t throw too many stones here. More important, instead of self-righteous criticism the Episcopal ceremony can prompt humility. The two photographs above remind me of when I watched my first Christmas pageant as a parent. The gaggle of kids stood there at the front of the church, glittery wings akimbo, golden crowns sliding over their ears, playing their parts with no clue of how small and awkward they looked. At that moment I knew, this is how adults look to God.

Photographs by Stacey Westcott and Jose M. Osorio for the Chicago Tribune.

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