Just a quick note to let everyone know that, while this would normally be a dekePod week, this particular week is not a dekePod week. That week is next week. Specifically, September 23, which will feature a first glimpse at Photoshop CS4.

In the meantime, I was just a moment ago reviewing the first video edit of this very dekePod. Which brings me to the Greenberg-McCain controversy. Haven’t heard? Well then . . .

First the dekePod backstory: My video guys seem to derive great pleasure from attempting to install images that they know I’m going to reject. John McCain’s face is a regular favorite. He pops in just about every first-draft episode, and on the flimsiest of pretenses. For reasons that have nothing to do with politics or party preferences, I never want to see a photo of that man again.

So it’s fitting that his face is all over the place for reasons that have everything to do with Photoshop. The very issue of The Atlantic that sits on my overburdened coffee table sports a masculine, nay, virile portrait of McCain under the banner “Why War Is His Answer.” (Personally, I’m more interested in that poultry porn story. Whoops, sorry, misread that.)

Although photographer Jill Greenberg did a heck of a job of capturing the man (she claims to have intentionally left his eyes asymmetrical and red, but I think he looks steely, like he’s sizing us up), apparently she’s no fan. Likewise apparent, the magazine won’t be working with her anymore. PDN broke the story and yesterday offered this follow-up summary.

Image-editing controversies are common enough, but I believe this is the first example of a highly visible photographer publicly humiliating the subject of her commercial work. The validity of her opinions aside, one has to wonder: If she dislikes the man so intensely, why accept the job of making him look like the valiant soldier on the cover of a national magazine? Near as I can tell, the answer seems to be: To get a chance to lens a presidential candidate. Foregoing integrity in the name of pointing out that someone else lacks integrity seems to me . . . disintegritous.

(Thx to John Nack for the heads up.)