Obama's colorization

[lame54]

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/03/youtube_is_racist - click link for comparison pics

YouTube Is Racist! (Or, Re: Re: The Politics of Color-Balancing)
posted by ELI SANDERS on MARCH 7 at 14:35 PM

Attention all you people who got up in arms about the Clinton campaign allegedly darkening Obama’s skin and widening his nose in an attack ad. (Including, sort of, me—although, if this is any defense, I was just linking, not fuming.)

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has a must-read explanation of why the “Hillary is a racist who will stop at nothing!” meme completely misses the real culprit: the sinister forces of YouTube compression.

Over the past few days there’s been a huge fracas over accusations that Hillary Clinton’s campaign deliberately darkened Barack Obama’s face in an ad they ran in Texas. It started with a post over at Daily Kos on Tuesday and has been spread far and wide since then.
The problem is that it’s impossible to compare color tones using YouTube clips because their compression process doesn’t preserve color fidelity. However, FactCheck.org got hold of a high-quality recording of the ad as it appeared on station KCEN in Waco, Texas, and then compared it to MSNBC’s streaming version of the debate from which the clip was taken… In the ad version, Obama’s face has been desaturated (i.e., there’s less color tone) but it doesn’t look any darker than the original. Nor has his face been widened to make Obama’s nose more prominent, as the original posters also suggested. That was yet another YouTube artifact.

The Obama mob seem to be getting increasingly shrill and frenetic. And annoying. It's a shame 'cos he's a great candidate. The mob seems to have more in common with the Hillary they hate than they do with Obama.

Posted by blank12357 | March 7, 2008 4:28 PM

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. The Obama support is very insecure. It's all about being the victim

of one dirty trick or another, all the while sliming Hillary Clinton 24/7. They never really take the time to say much good about Obama however.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. Anyone who wanted to know this knew it right away... it's obvious

And those who desperately wanted to believe an obvious hoax will probably never be dissuaded from their view.

[Rageneau]

3. Who-all owes Hillary an apology on this -- KOS, KO, Buzzflash, half of DU....

Anybody who believed and/or said that Hillary's campaign manipulated Obama's skin tone -- without knowing for sure whether it was true -- owes Hillary Clinton an apology.

But they won't give it, because Hating Hillary means never having to say you're sorry.

Only people with class apologize when they're wrong.

[AX10]

6. Kos, KO, Buzzflash, Huffpost, and more than half of DU.

as well as Air America radio have proven to be extremists. They are every bit the extremist as the right wing activists are.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SKKY]

5. I KNEW IT! THAT COMPRESSION CODEC IS RACIST!!!!

I've had my doubts for a long time now. :sarcasm:

[Buzz Clik]

7. I am totally unaware of this controversy, but I'd like to toss in a couple of points.

The Clinton campaign announced publicly that they would be going strongly negative and would be using, in their own words, the "kitchen sink" approach. No holds barred. They have been true to their promise. Comparing Obama to Bush, Ken Starr, and other distateful figures. Putting McCain in a more positive light than Obama -- over and over and over again. Playing the fear card, dancing around race issues, going insane about ads that used exactly the same tactics she's using, soiling themselves over the monster comment but standing behind every insult they hurl at Obama.

They had earlier coughed up the picture of Obama in the Somali gard and gave it to Drudge; the GOP was thrilled to see pull this on someone in her own party.

So, a video appears in which Obama's appearance seems altered. Would anyone be surprised to find out that the Hillary campaign had done this on purpose? No. Did those who went nuts overreact? Of course. However, it would be nice if Hillary backed off her scorched earth approach to this campaign -- but she won't. Such is life.