Hilarious spectacular fail

[Adam]

So, Washingtonian magazine (more specifically Washingtonian MOM) did a profile on Jay Carney's family, specifically on his wife, ABC social contributor Claire Shipman. It's pretty much the usual woman-juggling-everything-and-being-successful puff piece, with the weird added component of being a fashion show that these magazines do. In other words, a whole lot of words that are marginally interesting, but of pretty much no significance whatsoever, plus pictures of the family in various bits of clothing to promote them.

So the cover-piece is an "action shot" in the kitchen of the Carney home. Cute, kitschy, does a good job of showing off the son's overpriced plaid PJ pants. It also shows off the fact that the Carney kitchen is filled with Soviet propaganda posters. Oops!

Then, two pictures down, they have a cutesy picture of mom and dad pretending that they are at dad's work, and the kids are the reporters. The background is a bookcase, presumably in the Carney home. The only problem is that it's painfully obvious that they have taken whatever tiny bookshelf they did find in the Carney home and regenerated it over and over for the background. And, in doing so, they forgot to take the son's pinky finger out of one of the books.

Optics FAIL.

[Gingersnap]

There another pic that identifies way more photoshopped books. You'd think he would have better image control.

[Adam]

There another pic that identifies way more photoshopped books. You'd think he would have better image control.

There are dozens out there now. The whole thing is photoshopped.

And it doesn't really matter, at least in any meaningful way. Everyone already knows that these puff-piece magazine article pictures are 'shopped. I just find it pretty funny that a.) they screwed this up so incredibly badly, and; b.) that the WH Press Secretary didn't know any better.

[scott]

The truly sad part is that these are the "professionals" in Washington media.

[scott]

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[Gingersnap]

I worried about allowing over-privileged children to flip eggs and elbow orange juice off the counter but then I realized that the illegal servants would clean everything up.

Whew! Close one.

[Tom Servo]

The boy's arm also barely touches a thin blue book, and it's cloned on the other side of the bookcase as well, with the barely visible whisp of skin attached. This was a real hatchet job.

Professionals? Hell, I could do that bad on my own!

It's trivial, but having it pointed out really does irk me. What motivation could there be for filling out those bookcases, if not to make the subjects look smarter than they are? It's as patently unfair to them as it is when they take a photo of a conservative from an unflattering angle, and then mickey with the lighting to make them look sinister. (Need an example? Just look for any conservative on a magazine cover, ever.)