while muttering along the way

Among all the controversy, conversation and contention that Rolling Stone’s profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal stirred up, I thought it would be a good idea to skip the punditocracy and check out the White House’s response. McChrystal was summoned, guesses and postulations were thrown into the air, talk of resignation festered, and all I wanted to do was browse the White House’s clean and saavy website.

But alas, I was thwarted. Although, I was reminded of a simpler time, before flash was standard and before blogging was passe. Most importantly though, the veil was lifted from the White House’s PR machine and only content remained. Here is what I saw:

Now it doesn’t look like much, and I must confess, I was instantly bored and disappointed when I arrived at this. But I’ll be damned if there isn’t something to be said about the surface treatment that press releases receive these days. Mainly, there is something to be said about the assumed prettiness of media.

If a media outlet were to exist in purely the form above, I doubt it would ever become “mass media”. Its just too hard to keep the attention of a reader with such a non-existent graphic design. There is almost an unspoken requirement for media to be dressed up these days.

Good or bad, I don’t really care to dwell on because like it or not, numerous graphic designers and other professionals have food on their table because of this underlying media fact. Plus, we as the unaware media consuming public get to reap the benefits that such visual stimulation incurs. I mean, can anyone say in earnest that they wouldn’t want to receive their straight-from-the-White-House web news from something that looks this good?

The slightly weird thing about this is that nothing appears to have changed on the surface of the site. Usually, such lapses in web-mystique are the product of re-formatting or re-designing, but not this time (at least it isn’t apparent to me).

Nevertheless, I should conclude from this episode that the lapse in website prettiness is Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s fault. Also, McChrystal is irreplaceable. And COIN is infallible. And the POTUS is weak on defense. And Biden was right.

(most important take-away from all of this rambling = BIDEN WAS RIGHT)