Shade

Oh my, was this entertaining and illuminating. President Obama's staff photographer during his terms in the White House, juxtaposes newspaper headlines, excerpts and numerous brag/rage Tweets from our current White House resident with photos of Obama that present how differently the two men approach their role as Leader of the Free World.

Suffice to say, one comes out looking like a lost and petulant child, the other like a mature, measured leader.

It's a quick read, as it's mostly photographs with captions and the blurbs from 45's Tweets and related quotes/articles are (mercifully) brief. But the point is made.

I'm sure those I know who are all-in for MAGA won't care for this book, but then most of those folks who I know that are show more all-in for MAGA aren't trolling my Goodreads page. I'll leave it at that.

It's pretty clear who the demographic is for this book. If you fall into that category, you'll love this. If you don't, move on. Or maybe...just maybe...dive in. Having all of these incidents and moments compiled in sequential order really make a case. show less

You may have heard the term "throwing shade." I had, but wasn't sure what it meant. According to Pete Souza, official photographer during the Obama presidency, it means, "a subtle, sneering expression of contempt or disgust with someone." Hence, the name of the following book, a collection of Souza's photographs.

Pete Souza was Obama's official photographer during his presidency. As many of us, he was dismayed when Trump won the 2016 election. He has since been periodically been posting photographs taken during Obama's presidency to remind us of what we have lost. Many were posted without explanation or label, and may have seemed random. In this book, he presents a sampling of some of the photographs he has posted, and also includes the show more Trump tweet, statement, news article or other action that inspired or compelled him to post the particular photo in question. The impetus for his publication of the photos hasn't previously been revealed, and the connection was sometimes obscure, often snarky, and always on point. I found this to be an uplifting book, but sad in that it really brings home how far we've fallen.

Some examples:

--Obama shaking hands with an awestruck young cub scout; posted after Trump's disgraceful speech at the Boy Scout convention.

--Obama holding a glass of water with one hand; you can guess what instigated this.

--Bo (the Obama's dog) sitting in Obama's Oval Office chair; Bo never "leaked" in the White House.

--Photo of the secure iPad on which Obama received his daily briefings; posted the day after Trump met with the Russian ambassador and other Russians in the Oval Office (the day after firing Comey) and revealed classified information to them.

A nice diversion.

3 1/2 stars show less

I loved this book. So much. If you’ve seen any of Peter Souza’s photos of President Obama in the last couple of years and thought they offered an interestingly sane contrast to one of Donald Trump’s latest demented tweets, that was no mere coincidence.

An American photojournalist, Souza was the former Chief Official White House Photographer for U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama and the former director of the White House Photography Office.

Souza had admired the qualities in the men he had worked and spent countless hours with as their official photographer. He had observed them every day and respect them for their hard work, for making tough but well-informed decisions on important issues after having asked thoughtful show more questions from their qualified staff and listening to advice. He was a non-partisan but admired the qualities of qualified leadership in both Presidents Reagan and Obama.

On Inauguration Day 2017, he was emotional and depressed. He felt it was surreal that the man he had come to respect so much was now handing over the keys to what was essentially “a carnival barker who had ascended to the presidency by sheer bravado, bullshit, and outright lies”. He had seen what the presidency required under Reagan and Obama, who both took the job seriously and respected the office of the presidency.

And now, the man who had entered the field of politics by accusing Obama of having a fraudulent birth certificate was every day making it his specialty to play “how low can you go” as the leader of the American people and took the world hostage to play in the greatest live reality show project ever. With him in the lead role, naturally.

Peter Souza has something to say about all this. He is a photojournalist* at heart and is also a man of few words when one of his images can tell a whole story. He started sharing his pictures of the Obama years on Instagram, accompanied by short captions that offered righteous criticism of the sitting president. He gave no explanations for his image choices, leaving his viewers to link them to the latest news items or countless presidential tweets.

He also didn’t give interviews or explain his motives to anyone publicly. Many said he was “throwing shade” on the sitting president. When he googled the expression, Merriam-Webster explained it as a “subtle, sneering expression of contempt for or disgust with someone—sometimes verbal, and sometimes not.”

He decided this was an accurate description of what he had been doing, and he kept it up for the first 500 days of the new administration, which is what we find profiled in this book, though he says he has every intention of keeping throwing shade at President T for a good while to come still.

For this book, he’s chosen to give the reader more context, so he’s included the president’s specific tweets or the news articles which led him to respond to with his own photographs of the former administration with pointed snarky captions. For those who’ve more or less kept up with both his feed and the daily news, this makes for lots of sighing and nods of recognition, and inevitable nostalgia.

For those who were not familiar with Peter Souza before... my best guess would be nostalgia? Which was my initial reaction, but perhaps also a sobering and even necessary context in which to put the current events, since I can see from a distance—living over the border in the safety of the Canadian wilderness (aka Montreal!) and not being exposed to Fox News and then no TV at all and only as much news as I want to see at this point, which has dwindled down to very little for my own wellbeing—that it can be easy enough to lose track of what sanity is supposed to look like.

If it helps any at all, I have many many friends in the US and being an empath and always having had an interest in history, I live in constant alarm that the apocalypse could just be around the corner. In other words, a reminder that sanity lives among us too is always a helpful and even necessary and life-giving thing to cherish.

*He was a photographer with The Chicago Tribune, stationed at the Washington, D.C., bureau from 1998 to 2007; during this period he also followed the rise of then-Senator Obama to the presidency. —Wikipedia

My partner just texted me. I told him I had just finished typing and needed to edit this review just now, so instead of my bland “definitely recommend this one” I’ll copy:
LOVED this book 2 bits!!!
5 stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Rare rating from me! show less

After a brief introduction, the book consists of, on the left-hand page, a Trump tweet and/or a headline and excerpt of a news article (most often from the New York Times, Washington Post, or the Guardian), and, on the right-hand page, a photo of Obama, captioned by the author, juxtaposing with the content on the facing page. For example, when Trump tweets "WITCH HUNT," the accompanying photo shows Obama at the White House, greeting a trick-or-treater dressed up as a witch. As the author writes in his intro, in the early days of the Trump administration, Souza posted photos of Obama, "using subtle captions that contrasted with something the new president had done" - fans on Instagram called it throwing shade.

Some of my favorite show more photos:

p. 97 Michelle and Barack Obama from behind in silhouette, watching Fourth of July fireworks

p. 107 Obama leaving Jamaica in 2015, waving goodbye before boarding the plane; a rainbow arcs across the sky behind him and seems to be coming from his hand.

p. 145 the Resolute Desk, with a plaque that reads "Hard things are hard" show less

This is a fairly new book, published just this year by Barack Obama's official photographer (Souza had also been Reagan's official photographer). Easy to read in a single sitting, I took 2 days to go through it. I had not heard of the term *throwing shade* before and neither, apparently, had Souza. But he googled and learned that it meant "a subtle, sneering expression of contempt for or disgust with someone - sometimes verbal, and sometimes not."

And so Souza agreed that that was what he had been doing; in the first few days of the new presidency, he would post a photo on his own Instagram account, often accompanied by a caption. It was in the comments and responses to this that he first heard the term *throwing shade*. This book was show more born from that:

"Yup, that's what I was doing - throwing shade. And I kept it up for the first 500 days of the new administration, and I plan to keep going long after you've read this book. My comments are often humourous, and I'd even say they are more or less respectful. They are certainly more respectful than the tweets coming from the president...I also try to make subtle comments with my Instagram posts without directly revealing what the current president has said or done....In this book, I take a turn to full transparency and let it all hang out. In the pages that follow, you will see adaptations of my original posts matched up directly with what inspired them - a presidential tweet and/or the news that caught my attention in the first place. You can call it shade. I just call it truth."

Some are really funny: tweet: "...I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius...and a very stable genius at that!" on the left side page, then, on the right, a photo of Obama riding a horse on the beach with this caption: "Heading to the stable (noun. 1: a building for the lodging and feeding of horses, etc")

Others are heartbreaking: News headline: "Trump Announces US Will Exit Paris Climate Deal, Sparking Criticism at Home and Abroad". The photo on the opposite page shows the actual page of the Paris Climate Agreement signed by Obama, with the caption : I'm thinking of the poignant words of Woody Guthrie: 'This land is your land, this land is my land...this land was made for you and me.'" (each line on a separate page, accompanied by photos of Obama and his family enjoying the land, and water and nature. Every page's entries and photos are dated.

This was a good one. Good to see Souza taking action and continuing to call out the lies and bullshit. In his Acknowledgments at the end, he thanks the usual suspects, including journalists and ends with this: "But most of all, thank you to all of you who have mobilized to let your voices be heard. A special thanks to the kids from Parkland. for standing up and speaking out. You have inspired me and millions of others." show less

A most amazing book that brought me to tears. I probably could not have read it when it was first published—in 2018. This book features tweets by former US president Trump on the left hand pages, followed on the right hand pages with striking photos of former president Obama by the author, White House photographer Pete Souza. It provides a stark contrast between the two men, not without snark (or call it shade) from Souza. Just beautiful in so many ways.

Some people call it throwing shade. Pete Souza calls it telling the truth (I'm with Pete). Sometimes funny, more often infuriating, this is a comparison of the first 500 days of presidencies 44 and 45. I hope our country (and world) survive so we might see progress (again) with a 46th.