Well, a bunch of them anyway. And it’s long overdue.

This photo is from 2003, the day my son was born:

This is my son today:

This is taking far, far too long.

Cross-posted at BlogHer.com

Image control is nothing new in politics. Campaigns try and make candidates look more down to earth, more athletic, more like someone you’d have a beer with. They try and make them look less old, less harsh, even less intelligent.

This has been the way of political campaigns for as long as I’ve been voting and it’s been the way of the media to eat up each photo op and event and regurgitate it for the world to see.

Then came Senator Barack Obama and his constant theme of ‘change’ and ‘hope’ and the promise to do things differently.

I believe that message. I respect that message. I even buy that message coming from a politician. NOT an easy task for this former new reporter who’s instinct is to trust no one and question everything.

So maybe I am just buying into the spin. Maybe I am being used as a pawn in this image-conscience media game. Maybe I am naive and a sucker for blogging this…but my eyebrow raised once a few days ago and again this morning as some ‘image’ issues hit the news.

From Politico:

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

From ABC News:

“Michelle Obama makes her debut appearance on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday as her husband, presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama, fights for key women voters. Her appearance on a popular women’s daytime television program coincides with subtle attempts by the Obama campaign to soften her image and combat efforts by some conservatives and critics to paint her as an unpatriotic, angry, black woman.”

Taken one by one these issues come with explanations, as a voter, I totally understand. However put together, it made me raise my eyebrows and wonder if the image spins were occurring behind the scenes. If this was the scripted misstep and then inevitable backpeddling of politics as usual, with campaign strategists plotting how to get rid of the persistent rumors that the Senator is Muslim and the Fox News host discussing the image of ‘angry black women’ on television in relation to Michelle Obama.

On the ‘women wearing headscarves’ issue Sepia Mutiny writes, “I have no doubt that Obama is disappointed in his staffers over this but the buck has to stop at the top of the ticket. By forcefully refuting rumors that he is a ‘secret Muslim,’ I think he is beginning to overreact and hurt his reputation among the very people who believe in him to bring a change. I mean, how in the world do you expect to campaign in Detroit and NOT be associated with Muslim supporters?”

This discussion constantly drives me crazy for many reasons, not the least of which is “What the HECK is wrong with being MUSLIM???!” Of course we all know there is anti-Muslim sentiment in this country, particularly since 9-11. However most thinking people understand the difference between terrorism and organized religion of any faith.

Every time the Obama campaign has to denounce the rumor the Senator is secretly a Muslim, I always feel a twinge of sympathy pain for Muslim-Americans.

Rochelle Riley at the Detroit Free Press blog writes, “That his campaign apologized, as it should have, for the badly mishandled incident by campaign volunteers was not the bigger story.

The bigger story is that hateful extremists who used to exist on the fringe of society are now taking over and too much is being done to appease them instead of ignore them.

The Obama volunteers who didn’t want the women to provide fuel for rumors that Obama is a secret Muslim chose to let hate-mongers dictate their actions and hurt the women’s feelings. They made a mistake, as far as we know. (Of course, the Web would have you believe that they did it on purpose because they KNEW that these women were actually plants by Sen. John McCain’s campaign, an unlikely but possible scenario that seems all the more impossible when you read about their wonderful attitudes.)”

And in the broader picture, when putting all the incidents together, Shakespeare’s Sister writes, “To be quite honest, I don’t really have anything in particular to say about either of these items. They both strike me as completely predictable from a middle-of-the-road, mainstream, establishment Democrat, which is what Obama is (and always has been) and are therefore predictably sigh-inducing, at least from this non-partisan progressive.”

Again, even my eyebrow was raised seeing all these headlines at once-however just a *tiny* bit of reading into each made me quickly realize they were not the lack of change we expect. Moreover, they seemed to be the expectation of perfection, and the need to push a headline.

Should we expect the Obama campaign to be cautious about all things ‘image’ related whether it is legitimately a policy issue, like the public financing for the general election, or a trumped up spousal media circus? Of course.

As Michelle Obama said on the View, “You have to be really careful in what you say because everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued.”