Thinking Christian
What does the picture here represent? An attitude toward the President? An attitude toward the Cross? Or (could it be?) simple ignorance of the central symbol of our country’s largest and most enduring organic institutions?
Update at 3:20 pm: The image has been removed from the NY Times web page (see comment 4). It’s still accessible at Free Republic, though. Here is how it currently appears at Google’s index page for the article:
"Engaging… exhilarating.… This might be the most surprising and refreshing book you’ll read this year!" — Lee Strobel
"Too Good To Be False is almost too good to be true!" — Josh McDowell
"Engaging… exhilarating.… This might be the most surprising and refreshing book you’ll read this year!" — Lee Strobel
"Too Good To Be False is almost too good to be true!" — Josh McDowell
Note to commenters:
I have a firm policy (number 7 here) against certain kinds of political commentary on this blog, which applies both to myself and to commenters. The topic of this post is the NY Times: a cultural indicator, a signal of how careless thought-leaders can be with respect to the sacred. The topic is not President Obama.
My policy against political discussion does not include a blanket prohibition against discussing social issues like the health-care bill — the focus of the Times article — but I would appreciate it if you would recognize that, too, is not the topic of this post. I intend to keep the discussion focused.
Since I read your post before I saw the image, your point was clear right away. But, I imagine that the idea, regardless of how well it was executed, was an allusion to the Red Cross (or Greek Red Cross) which many probably see and think of humanitarian aid (e.g., medical care) with few, if any, explicit religious connections.
The Staff of Asclepius or Caduceus would have been far better choices for healthcare symbol, because they actually are symbols for healthcare in the U.S.
Humanitarian aid is not synonymous with healthcare; it also involves food, water, shelter, refugee care, economic development, and more; and it implies help provided to populations under unusual duress, not long-term universal policies for a generally prosperous nation. The Red Cross organization has nothing to do with the proposed legislation, and my guess is that if they thought the photo was alluding to them, they would find that inappropriate too.
So if that was the intent as you suggest it may have been, it was still poorly conceived and it still displays a remarkably cavalier attitude towards central symbols of church and culture.
To be clear, I wasn’t attempting to justify their usage, but just to consider a possibility based more in carelessness than blasphemy. For what it’s worth, the image seems to have been removed from the article; leastways, it no longer appears in my browser.
The image is still accessible at Free Republic.
Tom:
Maybe, but when you put “health illustration” into google images, you get a fair number of crosses.
You get a lot more of the other symbols instead, especially if you use the more relevant searches, “health symbol” or esp. “healthcare symbol.” Additionally, the Staff of Asclepius and the Caduceus are not subject to the same huge message ambiguity that a cross is. The Cross is still an unlikely and poorly conceived choice for a “healthcare” symbol, even if you can dig out a small minority of instances where it has been used that way.
In other words, suppose the Times intended the viewer to think “healthcare” when they saw that image. Well, that’s better than if they intended the viewer to think “Messiah,” I’ll grant that. But to think that many readers would associate that image with the idea “healthcare” above all other ideas, they would have to be incredibly, unbelievably out of touch with the core symbolism of the country’s longest-lasting organic institutions. My point still stands.
If you recall your Francis Schaeffer he remarked upon this phenomenon, – the alienation of symbols from their original cognitive associations and the exploitation of their emotional residue for the purpose of manipulating public opinion. JT’s response illustrates the success of this tactic. The “Red Cross” began, as did most charitable organizations began, as a Christian enterprise… hence the “red cross” a symbol which was later secularized as it conformed itself to an increasingly secular western civilization.
The use of the cross in the image is, no doubt, intended to manipulate emotions and invest the president with the positive feelings that symbol still invokes in most people. The imagery is subtle enough that it could be fobbed off as a “trick of the light” but there is no doubt some cynical editor chose that particular photo because of the halo/cross effect.
I was involved in Canadian politics (so I’m Canadian and don’t have a dog in this hunt) and learned from that experience to distrust media. “The camera always lies!”
Tom:
A Christian cross usually has the vertical piece longer than the horizontal. A medical cross has both pieces identical in length. The image in the article fits the latter much closer than a Christian cross. Maybe it’s my Christian background, but I don’t really perceive a Christian cross unless its shaped like a person:
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Further, I wouldn’t say a medical cross is uncommon. In most illustrations, a cross on a building, briefcase, nurses hat, ambulance, pill bottle, all signify some sort of medical application and are regularly recognizable. I’d be surprised if you have a first aid kit without a cross.
(I assume the medical cross originates with the Red Cross, which got its symbol from the inversion of the Swiss flag, which can be traced back to the Christian cross.)
Yep, just another secular organization founded by secular progressives for the greater good and social justice…
Dunant was born in Geneva, Switzerland as the first son of businessman Jean-Jacques Dunant and his wife Antoinette Dunant-Colladon. His family was very devoutly Calvinist and had significant influence in Geneva society. His parents strongly stressed the value of social work, and his father was active helping orphans and parolees, while his mother worked with the sick and poor.
Dunant grew up during the period of religious awakening known as the Réveil, and at age eighteen he joined the Geneva Society for Alms giving. In the following year, together with friends, he founded the so-called “Thursday Association”, a loose band of young men that met to study the Bible and help the poor, and he spent much of his free time engaged in prison visits and social work. On November 30, 1852, he founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA and three years later he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its international organization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant
Moynier came from a rich and established Geneva family of merchants and bankers. He studied law in Paris and received his doctorate in 1850. Because of his Calvinist persuasion, he became interested in charity work and social problems early on. In 1859 he took over the chairmanship of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare. He was also active in around forty additional charitable organizations and groups involved in tasks from improving the conditions for prison inmates to caring for orphans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moynier
The Red Cross flag is often confused with the Flag of Switzerland which is the opposite of it. In 1906, to put an end to the argument of Turkey that the flag took its roots from Christianity, it was decided to promote officially the idea that the Red Cross flag had been formed by reversing the federal colours of Switzerland, although no clear evidence of this origin had ever been found[5].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement#The_Red_Cross
BTW – I cruised by Richard Dawkins site today and see that he is doing a “Julian the Apostate” under the title of “Non-Believers Giving Aid” – a laudable effort although it’s self-definition as opposition to “believers” (who could they be?) inadvertantly advertises the charitable work with which Christianity is particularly affiliated.
Woodchuck64,
I don’t disagree that there is that connection between the cross and medical aid. It seems to me, though, that it’s usually either emergancy care or humanitarian care, not routine care.
And even if I could he challenged on that, the symbol is still top ambiguous, especially when superimposed over the president. It can too easily be viewed as a statement regarding the man (messianic figure) rather than his policies—especially since there really does exist a more appropriate, specific symbol to represent the policies.
Bill Whittle at PJTV addresses this very issue in a short video “The Power & Danger of Iconography: The Resistance Steals Obama’s Weapons”
http://www.pjtv.com/v/2317
It’s an insightful look at the power of iconography… and yes, there appears a deliberate program of promoting Obama as some sort of “savior figure” and whether that is a temporal savior (health) or an eternal savior (religion) is immaterial to the pragmatic propagandist…
That link requires a paid subscription 🙁
Try this one
http://www.pjtv.com/page/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/127/
top one on the left – no subscription for me… I’m too cheap.
Tom:
No disagreement. Nola Lopez, as an experienced artist, would certainly be expected to recognize the potential for religious symbolism in that drawing and correct it if she wanted to. I know artists are especially in tune with symbolism and multiple meaning.