Following the flow of news images on-line, I thought I’d begun to notice two related trends in recent months. Of the AP, AFP and Reuters images that appear along with news stories, an increasing number seem to be more clearly editorial than usual and more clearly and more often critical of President Bush. Beginning (in my memory, at least) with the images of a haggard and stunned looking man descending the gang plank to tour a Katrina-damaged delta, and coinciding with steadily decreasing approval ratings over the last few months – news photographers, editors and news outlets haven’t lately been kind to W.

Among these images, the occasional funny face:

This image ran with a caption noting the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that puts Bush’s approval rating at 39%. (What the caption doesn’t say is that, in one of his frequent moments of Oval Office whimsy, Bush is doing his best Gary Coleman: “what-choo-talkin’-‘bout-Cheney?”)

Some of the more subtly incriminating images reveal the extent to which Bush’s encounters are staged, and the distance he maintains from the people of his own country and others:

 
 
 
But by far the strangest image I’ve seen of the president, perhaps ever, is the “Left Behind” photo.
 
 
The picture itself is highly unusual. While it seems likely that Bush would be standing in front of a chalkboard while speaking to parents, teachers and students about his “No Child Left Behind” act, the words “left behind” aren’t written in chalk; they’ve been airbrushed, in negative, with the use of stencil, on something that aims to look like a chalkboard. So the event looks staged. But the picture is also much grainier than the average digital news photo; it looks as if somebody’s put through it a couple iterations of the “sharpen” tool. The picture itself looks like a fake.
 
Apparently, though, it’s an AFP file photo taken by photographer Paul Richards. The caption that accompanies the image reads:

Though the picture was taken in January 2004, it has been called back into service to illustrate the recent findings of a congressional investigation. When paired with this caption, the words “left behind” (excised from the “no child” either in the camera or later in the file) seem to refer to the ethics the Bush administration left behind in promotion of their “key education initiative.” Enough has been made about the children, teachers, and school systems the act leaves behind by not allocating the funds necessary to adequately meet the act’s requirements, however, to suggest that connotation too.

The more I look at this picture, though, the more I think of Bush “left behind” in terms of the divine rapture and the enormously popular Christian book series that chronicles an imagined version of the second coming – the Left Behind series.

The first book in the series, Left Behind, begins with the worldwide rapture of good Christians: “In one cataclysmic moment, millions of people disappear, throwing the world into instant chaos.” The next eleven books chart the progress of sinners and non-believers to figure out what’s happened, survive earthquakes, plagues, painful sores, rivers of blood, and the antichrist (one Nicolae Carpathia, “indwelt by Satan himself,” and – judging by his name, a Russian. Perhaps remnants of the cold war linger after all … sadly though, not the useful ones). The books allow devout Christian readers to thrill to the sinful, faithless exploits of those God leaves behind, all while having their own values, stalwart but perhaps too boring for fictionalization, confirmed.

In the wake of Bush’s supreme court appointments the fundamentalist Christian right has felt that their man in Washington has left them behind. Meirs, a stealth nominee, has no record to show just how she may vote; despite Bush’s exhortations to just trust him, despite even James Dobson’s assurances that Meirs is on their side, fundamentalists remain wary. This image could then work for them, much as the Left Behind books do, as a consoling and vindicating expression. The man who feels himself, presents himself, so much on the side of the one true God, is just another of those left behind.