Why is Rick Santorum Using a Picture of 4Chan Founder Moot on His Website?

[JonnieCache]

Because, class war. (Obviously for "goatse" read "moot's face")

"In this scenario, the dialogic image must be reduced to a short-hand: Goatse, the in-joke, provides that. Within Goatse, the dialogic image is covert; unable to exercise any significant level of authorial control within the design process, the designer forces the critical dissonance by tapping into the in-joke. Rather than a critical dialogue between worker and employer being an open one, it has become a secretive conflict; rather than a critical design image being a conscious attempt to demystify design as a mediated process, it becomes an attempt to undermine and destroy the design process. Adopting the supposedly most efficient working process for capital has pushed design to eat itself. The dialogic image has become the weaponisation of ridicule; the designer has become a postfordist saboteur of the industrial process, and the ever-present spectre of sabotage as the unspoken clot of class-war clogs another artery of capital."

http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/go...

for the record I like this article more because it amuses me than because I agree with it. although it is a good point.

[noonespecial]

Back in the old days when the web was young and goatse was still shocking, I famously predicted one evening after one too many beers that one day, goatse would be discussed in the same multiloquent, academic tones commonly reserved to describe the baroque period or neoclassicism.

I do believe I've just witnessed it.

[alanh]

What a wonderful rabbit hole your link provides. Cheers.

[yuchi]

Thank you for sharing.

[drewmck]

Same reason this happened: http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/on-politics/2...

His website was designed by agency. The agency tasked a designer to create layout, including 'patriot' photos. The designer, perhaps someone who disagrees with Santorum's politics, decided to add a photo of Moot as their own personal jab.

[mikegioia]

That took me way too long to catch.

[terhechte]

I don't know how long that's already been there, but if it's been some time than that's quite telling. Because then it took a long time until a person who knows the face of Moot dared to step onto Santorum's website. Says a lot about the visitors of his website.

[georgemcbay]

"Why does Rick Santorum have a pic of 4Chan's Moot on his website?"

For the epic lulz, of course.

[jgw]

Presumably because he uses the same PR firm as Osama bin Laden:

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/bert.asp

[mynameishere]

Doesn't seem epic enough to get fired over.

[josh2600]

Now I normally wouldn't upvote something like this on HackerNews, but that's superbly ironic.

[javert]

"It’s hard to believe that anyone working at such a well-established Republican media arm would be outwardly anti-Santorum."

That's a pretty ridiculous and insulting thing to say, betabeat. There are lots of Republicans who are not major proponents of violating womens' rights and other nasty socially conservative measures.

[Retric]

I don't think your reading that correctly. The important point is 'outwardly' and 'well-established Republican media arm'. Overall the Republicans have been vary good about staying on message and even if they don't support a candidate will vary rarely badmouth a fellow republican outside of primary's.

[intropic]

I'm not at all clear on why this is at the top on HN. This triviality is more appropriate for other forums.

[protomyth]

As MartinCron pointed out, it is important to know the source of your images when farming out work. This article is a topical demonstration of that principal. It will cause some embarrassment. It is also a great way, in this soundbite culture, to dismiss a person without having to actually go through the motions of a debate. This same thing can happen to your startup. Imagine some designer not liking your business and slipping in a photo of a serial killer on your site. Or if you're running an amusement park and a photo of a child molester is on your site.

Given all the things that can happen with stock photos, I believe folks should probably hire a photographer or get the photos from staff that swears they took them themselves. Get some releases signed if people are in the photos and be done with it.

[JeremyMorgan]

Maybe they knew 4chan, Reddit and the rest of the internet would start linking to his site once they found it.

Who's laughing now?

[DanBC]

> Who's laughing now?

Whoever charges them for the bandwidth used to serve pages to people who have no intention of voting Santorum?

[jbooth]

Santorum just cannot catch a break on the internet.

[slantyyz]

It would be even funnier if Moot and/or the original photographer sued Santorum because the site published a photo without his permission or a model release.

[MartinCron]

The more serious lesson to take from this is that you should make it your job to know how your graphic designers are sourcing the images used in high-profile public-facing web sites. So often, the directive is just "get me happy old people" or "get me people who look patriotic".

This can also keep you out of hot water with copyright issues, where the production graphic person just does a Flickr search to find the pictures to use.

[praptak]

Maybe it is someone's followup on the campain for "santorum" neologism, which was a revenge for his gay bashing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_%22santorum%22_neo...

[fideloper]

#include jokes.h

But seriously. The world has no sense of humor anymore?

[veb]

Yeah... I'm pretty the world does otherwise nobody would care about this. It's pretty funny.

[fnordfnordfnord]

trolled softly.

[algad]

Why the fuck should I care about what is on Rick Santorum's web site??

And why the fuck should this be on Hacker News??

[patrickgzill]

LOLWUT