Powell Power

The endorsement of Barack Obama by Colin Powell on NBC's Meet the Press has propagated the circulation of a particular black-and-white photograph in the blogosphere. The picture comes from a photo essay in the New Yorker, which depicts a grief-stricken mother in Arlington Cemetery draped on the tombstone of a U.S. soldier that is marked with the crescent and star that indicates his Muslim faith.

The other big digital rhetoric story that I noticed while watching Meet the Press has to do with the show's use of technologies that promote a particular type of information aesthetics to represent the electoral map. NBC apparently uses Microsoft Surface, a new table-like computer interface that has been both promoted and parodied in tech circles. Unlike CNN's John King, who interacts directly with the wall display, the map guy for NBC bends over the display like a seer peering into the oracular space.