Their dark materials

I love watching the counter spin being created around the popular image of John Kerry in his attempts to win the democrat ticket. The PR giants on huge retainer to muddy the waters are using all the dark powers in their armoury to tackle Kerry’s popularity. If its not thrusting into the limelight via Drudge rumours of Kerry’s elicits love life the spin cycle turns to attempt to undermine his post Vietnam conduct . Evidence of this has been planted by circulating a photograph which shows Senator John Kerry and Jane Fonda sharing a speaker’s platform at an anti-war rally.

Unlike an earlier photograph which captured John Kerry and Jane Fonda sitting in the audience of a 1970 anti-war rally at which both were speakers, this image of the two of them together at a speaker’s platform is of course more powerful but is fabricated.

According to my friends at Snopes.com the picture was created by merging two different photographs (both available through the Corbis archives) taken at two completely different times and places. The picture of John Kerry was captured by 20-year-old photographer Ken Light and documented Kerry preparing to give a speech at the Register for Peace Rally held in Mineola, New York, on 13 June 1971. The picture of Jane Fonda was snapped by Owen Franken over a year later while the actress was speaking at a political rally in Miami Beach, Florida, site of the Republican National Convention, in August 1972. Contemporaneous news accounts do not list Jane Fonda as one of the speakers at the 1971 Register for Peace Rally.

Let’s all take a deep breath and consider how powerful a tool the web is to the dark masters of PR and try and out the culprits and the fees they command.