Sounds like somebody needs a reading comprehension refresher:
Well, if we all get ice cream, then this thread will have been a positive thing.
Or pie.
OMG, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
So, had that been the case, would you have been upset if people had come into the thread and said “meh, making a baby cry for a couple minutes to get an interesting/cute/emotionally powerful picture isn’t that big a deal.”? Would it have been fair to expect your thesis to meet with universal agreement?
Had this been the actual case(as has happened in the pit in the past with Anne Geddes threads) I would expect a mix of “meh, minor temporary discomfort/distress, BFD”, “it’s for art, I don’t get it or like it, but it’s art”, “OMG won’t someone think of the children!” and several other reactions.
Now, since the two situations were identical in the behavior of the “artist”, the only new dimension is the political aspect. The reactions above would all still apply, with the additional possibility of “well, I just hate that fucker Bush so much that anything which creates useful propaganda against him is ok with me” and similar sentiments. Pre-sorting your fellow dopers into this category is likely to lead to a fair number of ruffled feathers.
Poisoning the well by saying that people who react with anything other than “universal condemnation” is a blind partisan cry-baby does not seem useful. Still, it’s your train, wreck it if you want.
Enjoy,
Steven
One thing that’s clearly going on here is a parallel of sorts to the “SUV driver talking on cell phone runs down and kills woman… not arrested!” thread, where people asked, what did the type of car have to do with it?
Same thing here, Bricker: if you were Pitting this woman simply because she was making babies cry, what did the whole Bush angle have to do with it?
But by putting the Bush theme at the heart of your thread title, you made it about Bush, and you implicitly made the standard one of “How does this stack up against things Bush has done, or that his more overzealous supporters have done?” And in that context, making a baby cry is pretty damned trivial, next to (on the Bush scale) the carnage in Iraq and Lebanon, and all the dead bodies in New Orleans. Let alone (looking at followers now) advocating the lynching of everyone from reporters to Supreme Court Justices, and advocating the execution of newspaper editors.
It’s too late to pretend this is just about some woman who made babies cry, and that you were Pitting her rather than anti-Bush people. You were taking a cheap shot at anti-Bush people for the actions of one random flake, and IMHO you got the reaction you deserved.
One thing that’s clearly going on here is a parallel of sorts to the “SUV driver talking on cell phone runs down and kills woman… not arrested!” thread, where people asked, what did the type of car have to do with it?
Same thing here, Bricker: if you were Pitting this woman simply because she was making babies cry, what did the whole Bush angle have to do with it?
But by putting the Bush theme at the heart of your thread title, you made it about Bush, and you implicitly made the standard one of “How does this stack up against things Bush has done, or that his more overzealous supporters have done?” And in that context, making a baby cry is pretty damned trivial, next to (on the Bush scale) the carnage in Iraq and Lebanon, and all the dead bodies in New Orleans. Let alone (looking at followers now) advocating the lynching of everyone from reporters to Supreme Court Justices, and advocating the execution of newspaper editors.
It’s too late to pretend this is just about some woman who made babies cry, and that you were Pitting her rather than anti-Bush people. You were taking a cheap shot at anti-Bush people for the actions of one random flake, and IMHO you got the reaction you deserved.
I’ve never been on a set with babies (thank Og) but I very much doubt any director would let everyone sit around chewing up money waiting for a baby to get around to crying.
Babies get auditioned solely on how they react when separated from their mother. If a baby fusses, out. Cuteness has nothing to do with it.
As for parents not allowing their babies to be made to cry - you’re somewhat naive. My wife, daughter and I went undercover at a scam artist who sells expensive pictures to parents who hope that their kids will get into show business. (My daughter was already working so we knew how it really worked.) The parents were ready and willing to shell out hundreds of bucks on the chance that their kids would get famous. No mother or father I ever ran into would object to something as basically harmless as making a baby cry for a scene.
SAG has strict rules about kids working over time. On one set, the union rep came into a set with a lot of 9 and 10 years olds, and announced “there will be no overtime on this set.” Then she left and all the parents cracked up. And shooting for this commercial went until it was done. We got a penalty, but no big deal.
Producers and directors do care about kids doing smoke work (anything remotely dangerous) but any parent who objects to a kid being made to cry would find that the calls for that kid stop coming.
That’s true. Authenticity is very important, and when you can fake that you got it made. But one of the reasons my daughter enjoyed acting is that people expect a lot out of you, and you are treated just like an adult. One kid they got out of a school was a pain - she got his lines, and then he got canned. Kids who act have something special. I saw one now well know actress, at age 10, seemingly about to lose it as shooting went past midnight - but when the camera started, she was right there. It was very impressive.
Maybe photographers have the time to wait around for a kid to cry, but film people don’t.
If you cry, can we take your picture? 
Steve.
Please. For the love of Pete.
The first toddler cried on his own. That gave her the idea.
She then shot a series of toddlers crying, some of whom she made cry.
The Pitting is for her making those subjects in that second group cry.
Sure, but you’ll never get me to sign off on letting her use it for her art project! 
Hmmm. Well, I agree she saw the emotion first, and then tagged it with a political caption.
But then she decided to expand that to a whole SERIES of pictures with similar political captions. And to do that, she got a whole bunch of kids and madethem cry, then took thier pictures.
*By describing it as “fueling the political agenda of the photographer,” you seem to be suggesting that the photographer’s initial goal was to create an anti-Bush work, and then decided that screaming kids would be a good way to achieve that goal. That seems like a significant distortion of what happened given the descriptions in the article. I too find the OP to be without much merit.
*
It is fair to say her inital goal was to create an anti-Bush work, and then she decided that screaming kids would be a way to do that… and the idea came to her after first seeing her picture of the first kid screaming.
So…now they’re screaming?
No, her anti-Bush angle was relevant. If I had concealed it - just Pitted her for the crying - someone would have been in here excoriating me for a stealth OP… getting people to agree it was horrible without disclosing that there was a political angle. Perhaps I could have added a lengthy disclaimer, saying that I didn’t feel her political views were at all relevant.
But that would have undercut the second of the two points I was making: that there were people here on the boards that would give her a pass on what she was doing BECAUSE she was anti-Bush.
You miss the mark. I was Pitting her only for her actions… and I was ALSO taking swipe at the people here who would forgive or minimize it because of its political tenor.
As I said, I find it quite depressing.
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
Heaven forbid political discourse be about actual policy. Far better to spend one’s time demonizing partisan opponents.
Well, since you seem immune to having that pointed out, have at it.
I agree, and disagree with John Mace. I’d argue that Kerry had more to lose by contesting Ohio than his supporters did, because it was such a seeming longshot: Kerry would have been ridiculed by the Enforcing Bipartisanship and Comity on Democrats Board (D. Broder, chairman) as a fruitcake who didn’t know when it was over, and while he would have kept his Senate seat, he would have been dropped off the Georgetown A-list.
While we Dem voters had nothing to lose by demanding a full report, in real time, of the abuses in Ohio and the magnitude of their effects.
But more important, if the outcome of an election is regarded as a private matter between the candidates, rather than between their respective supporters as well, then isn’t there a disconnect between that and the notion that the candidates are representing their supporters, and not just competing for whatever private prize goes to the last person to be voted off the island?
Elections are about us, not just the candidates.
Nixon put a statesmanlike face on it in public, while he contested the results in several states through surrogates.
Behold, the Amazing Bricker, mind reader extraordinaire! Cruella D’ F-stop claims that she was inspired by the first child’s exceptional beauty to invite her and her mother for a photo-shoot. But Amazing knows better! He knows that she had in mind a scurrillous Bush-bashing from the git-go! Oh, sure, she claims she got the idea after she saw the contact sheets, but who are you gonna believe? A rabid, frothing Bush-basher or the profound insights of the Amazing?
(Hell, maybe she’s a solid, entreprenuerial Pubbie, who saw a way to grab off a quick buck from the Presidents massive unpopularity? And, no, I’m not rubbing it in, though there are certainly people on this Board who will clam that I am…I mean, sure, loyalty to The Leader, but then, the Dollar Almighty becks…)
You could have kept it oug of the title, and noted in your OP that you didn’t think the fact that she was using the crying-baby pix for anti-Bush posters should have anything to do with the discussion.
No, you missed the mark. Precisely by making the thread about dastardly things done in the name of anti-Bushism, you changed the standard to “what’s Pit-worthy with respect to Bushism and anti-Bushism, given what’s already been done in the name of those causes?”
And by that standard, making a baby cry by taking candy from it is pretty damned trivial.
No shit? And yet you don’t the slightest bit of a problem dropping 2,000 lbs. bombs on thousands of them.
How quaint.
How untrue.