The Pope with a clown, Susan Rice caught between 2 power-heads, and a heavily tattoo'd quarterback.

I don't know what Matt Drudge is trying to slip into our subconscious today, but it's phantasmagoric. Felliniesque.


Click to enlarge.

The quarterback is Colin Kaepernick, who, not having murdered anybody, seems to be doing comparatively well, NFL-wise. His mother is "annoyed." The body scribblings are Bible verses (we're told). Across the chest it says "Against All Odds." Is that in the Bible? I don't know. Ask the Pope (if he's through clowning around). I've heard of the book of Philipians, so maybe there's a Philcollinsians.

Hillary and Rahm are swirling around Susan Rice. The story is Hillary prefers Kerry as her successor. Fine, but I can't see the Pope+Clown → Tattoo'd Quarterback transition. I hate to think there's no connection, that these are simply the stories that belonged at the top of their respective columns. Drudge means so much more. Tell me what the meaning is.

Here's the story about the Pope meeting 1000s of circus performers at the Vatican:

Benedict, a known cat lover, paid particular attention to a pair of lion cubs that were brought up to him, stroking them and chatting with their trainers. At one point Benedict even bent down to caress one — not an easy feat given the 85-year-old pope has trouble with his knees and occasionally uses a cane.

A gentle scene. Not the first thing that leaps to mind when you think about Christians and lions. 

Drudge depicts women turning away from Obama.

Right now at Drudge:



Click to enlarge.

The full headline is "GALLUP: WOMEN TURNING AWAY." I cut "gal" from "Gallup" to symbolize the loss of females. Just kidding. I cropped the screen-grab to tighten the view of the revelant photographs. The metaphor was accidental, I admit.

But I don't think the juxtaposition of these photographs was accidental. Women are turning away, and there are Hillary Clinton and Candy Crowley, each turning away. Hillary is taking responsibility for security in Benghazi. And Candy is going rogue on debate moderation.

Click the image above to enlarge. You see what Obama is doing? He's palling around — to coin a phrase — with a cardboard image of himself. (And that was not an accidental allusion (to another gal).)

Ladies turn away from a narcissistic man — a man who is in love with himself. And ladies turn away from a man who's completely shallow — shallow to the point of 2-dimensionality.

ADDED: Rereading this post and the previous one, I find myself ranting out loud: Speaking of women turning away! We could have had the first woman President! She was there, she deserved it, she would have been better! This man who was not ready and apparently not really willing to take on the responsibilities of the presidency wooed us away from her. He deprived us of the first woman President! That's another reason for women to turn away. We can see now that the woman would have been tougher, smarter, more dedicated, every step of the way.

Hillary is letting us see that now, as she takes responsibility as she takes responsibility for security in Benghazi. It sounds as though she's protecting Obama from criticism. Sounds, superficially. But she is really criticizing him. Put the pieces together. Go back to that 2008 speech, embedded in that last post. She made her taking-responsibility statement, and immediately afterward, that video clip pops to the surface of the web. Beneath these surfaces there are depths. Not everything is 2-dimensional.

Halos for everybody.

At Drudge, right now, in the right-hand column, we've got both candidates, Romney and Obama,  emitting light rays from their noggins:



And in case you need a bigger nudge, there's good old Jesus, in his best internet-meme incarnation, that icon the old Spanish lady mis-restored. Botched-Icon Jesus is back on the front page today, because the old lady, wants to royalties now that fans are flooding into Zaragoza to see her painting.

An internet petition to keep the repair job garnered widespread support and seizing an opportunity to swell its coffers, the church began levying a 4 euro (£3) entrance fee on visitors, earning 2,000 euros in the first four days.

Lawyers acting for [Cecilia] Gimenez now insist she should be entitled to a cut of the profits, which she wants to go towards a charity of her choice....

Family of the original artist have called for the image of Christ with a crown of thorns to be restored to its former glory and have said they will seek legal action against Mrs Gimenez for "destroying" the work.

The Sancti Spiritus Hospital Foundation, which owns the Sanctuario de Misericordia, has also retained lawyers to defend the action and retain their right to proceeds from visitors to the church...

Art and law and religion... and greed. Always a fine mix!

ADDED: Note the line under the Obama pic: "Campaign Pitches Last Supper..." 

ALSO: The candidate's hands are funny, with Romney making an "O" and Obama pointing as if he could poke his finger into the hole. Freudian observations are obvious.

Clinton holds up a finger and says "You will feel it" — in this Drudge juxtaposition.

Here's the whole page frozen in time right now, but let me close in on these 4 photos:



"You will feel it" is — of course — a line from Clinton's convention speech, but illustrated with the finger pointed up, it takes us back to the Lewinsky days, when we heard about finger-shaped things inserted into vaginas and a finger was famously wagged at us for imagining that he had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Right underneath Bill Clinton — double meaning right there — is Hillary Clinton, and she's getting "snubbed." The snub is by the Chinese VP, but we imagine other snubs. Additional lines under Hillary's picture have her "dubbed" a "sneaky troublemaker."

And, speaking of troublemakers, we're reminded that Hillary is "half a world away" "[a]s Bill speaks." In case that's not a sharp enough nudge to get you to think about things Bill might do while his wife is away, your eyes are drawn quickly to the swelling bosom of Scarlett Johansson, who is one of "Barack's Angels," who will be on the convention stage tonight. (Scarlett's golden hair rolls and flows all down her breasts, while Hillary's hair, in that other pic, is dull, lank, and flat.) And what else are these beautiful young women up to in Charlotte where Hillary is half a world away? In Drudge tease, the trio of beauties "makes push."

And that push? You will feel it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paul Zrimsek said:

And here I thought the true caption for the Scarlett Johanssen photo was the line above it, not the line below.

He's referring to: "Advisers lower expectations for convention bounce..."

Today's Drudgetapostion: Qaddafi looking up, Obama looking down (and Irene coming up).

I love the kinetic energy here:



Qaddafi's unbowed head aims up and to the right, in the position associated with optimism and progress. Obama's head points in the opposite direction, down and to the left. Qaddafi is wrapped up in his own thoughts in this image, and Obama is all about ice cream. Meanwhile, as we read from right to left and top to bottom, the next image is the path of Hurricane Irene and the lines sweep us back up to the image of Qaddafi.

No one who has laughed at the Michele Bachmann corndog photo can deny that the ice cream functions as a phallic symbol. In this light, one notes that the ice cream is soft-serve. See the swirls? The ice cream swirls harmonize with the swirling pattern of a hurricane and the swirling thoughts in the mind of the Libyan monster.

Does Obama care? — the brilliant Matt Drudge subliminally prods us to ask. Is he childishly preoccupied with a swirly dessert (as he vacations and vacations and vacations)? Look up, Mr. President! Qaddafi is still standing! The hurricane is coming!

The headlines under Obama increase our feelings that he is allowing everything to collapse:

NATIONAL DEBT RISES BY $3 MILLION EACH MINUTE...

Obama sets record: $4,247,000,000,000 debt in just 945 days...

(Both links go to the same story.) Above him, we see "Man busted near Nat'l Mall with fireworks-packed car 'fitted with turret, multiple tubes'..." (Scary! But it wasn't — go to the link — a terrorist.) (Addition phallic imagery implied by these explosive tubes.)

And speaking of the "Nat'l Mall," glance down and to the left a notch, and you'll see the image of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, newly unveiled on the National Mall. Martin Luther King marched on Washington, and now he's there permanently. We sent Barack Obama to Washington and — the Drudge images say — he won't stay there, he keeps leaving, and he's not paying attention to the business of Washington. Meanwhile, in Tripoli, Qaddafi is intent on staying put, a strong man 'til the end. Obama is the soft center to a ice-cream manwich, with the hard men on either side — Qaddafi and King... and the violently disruptive woman Irene coming up behind him.

This has been another edition in the ongoing Althouse opus: The Art and Genius of Matt Drudge.

ADDED: Some art theory about lines and directions, from the artist Georges Seurat:

Harmony is the analogy between opposites and the analogy between elements similar in tonal value, color, and line, considered in terms of the dominant, and under the influence of lighting, in gay, calm or sad combinations.
The opposites are... For line, those forming a right angle....

Gaiety... in terms of line, lines above the horizontal.

Calmness in terms... of line, the horizontal.

Sadness in terms... of line, downward directions.

More here:

... Seurat believed that lines and angles... important to communication.... Ultimately, if the painting is a performance, it is a type of performance in that Seurat does not clearly give a political or ethical statement in his painting so much as he attempts to elicit one from the viewer (it COULD be about prostitution; it COULD be about the bourgeois and their instability as a social class; but we have no absolute way of knowing).  That indeterminacy is probably the most important part of this painting’s autonomy.  The idea of the painting as a dream state makes sense in this respect: dreams are ambiguous, and their meanings are speculative.

For painting, substitute website montage... and discuss!

Drudge finally shows interest in the Weiner.

Let's check out the display. Closeup:



The links are:

IT MIGHT BE MY WEINER...

'This Could Be The End For Him'... — the quote is something some "political consultant" said.

'I was a little bit stiff yesterday' — this is something Weiner himself actually said, intentionally making a penis joke!

'Have You Ever Taken A Picture Like This Of Yourself?'...

HUMA STAYS QUIET...

Done in by the social network...

Probe could give Weiner more headaches...

A longer view:



Is the proximity of the hog an intentional juxtaposition?

A Drudgtaposition that didn't last very long — for good reason.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Another comic Drudge juxaposition.

A reader sends this new example of what I like to call Drudgedy:



(The link for the "world's creepiest robot" went here.)

This morning's Drudgedy.

Another in a continuing series examining the humor of the juxtapositions of photographs on The Drudge Report. (And thanks to the reader who emailed me the tip.)

Today's exercise in the comedy of Drudge photographic juxtapositions — AKA Drudgedy.

At Drudge right now, the picture at the very top is the Obama-with-winged-fingers that we were talking about yesterday, but let's talk about this collection of images:



This is a mysterious one, so let's brainstorm. The first thing I noticed was how that Google "You can trust us with your data" device — whatever it really is — looks like it's designed to stamp beanies onto the Pope's head or perhaps to examine/muddle/read the mind of the Pope. In the center column, the space shuttle is a simple and obvious phallic symbol. The left column — which we may interpret in relation to the giant technological phallus — is mainly hands: Nancy Pelosi's outstretched palm and Arnold Schwarzenegger's thumb-to-fingers grasp approaching 3 phallic microphones thrust toward his face.

Okay, you take it from there.

Yet more photo-fun on Drudge.

Earlier, I showed you Drudge's "heat is on" picture of Al Gore with a picture of Obama slightly below, wiping his brow, and a picture of Biden gesturing — arms spread and palms out — just like Gore. Gore was at the top of the page, Obama was in the left column, and Biden was in the center column. A little later in the day, this went up in the third column:



Obama's upstretched hands are a bit different from Gore's and Biden's, but the resonance is there. What's also notable are the little wings "on" his hands — actually, probably, eagle decorations on top of flagpoles set up behind him. Then, a little below that, there's Eric Holder photographed in front of an eagle in such a way as to make it look like wings grow out of his neck. This is all, I'm sure, intentional — typical Drudge fun with photos. We might call it "Drudgery," but I'd prefer a portmanteau of Drudge + comedy: Drudgedy.

And quite aside from all that. Those 2 stories in red type are pretty important:

Obama calls AZ immigration law 'unenforceable'...

Justice Lawyer Accuses Holder of Dropping Black Panther Case -- for Racial Reasons...

Both of those deserve separate blog posts. Forgive me for presenting them as if they are nothing more than afterthoughts. Please discuss them in the comments, and I will, if I can, write better posts later and frontpage some comments.