Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Another country (Baldwin)“

This article examines the prevalence of confusion and incoherence in James Baldwin's 1962 novel Another Country, arguing that the novel should be read as an extended and theoretically rich meditation on the difficulty of gaining self-knowledge in oppressive social contexts. Its central thesis is that the novel is motivated less by the tragedy of Rufus Scott's suicide early in the novel than by the ethical imperative that compels all the characters to risk their sense of self (to figuratively commit suicide) in order to better understand the circumstances they face. Through this “suicidal” sensibility, Baldwin examines how self-knowledge in oppressive contexts frequently depends on people making extreme shifts in their conception of self—of who they are in relation to their society. These shifts are often dreaded and appear self-menacing, but Baldwin ultimately implies that they hold liberatory promise.

Penelitian ini mencoba untuk ikut menyumbangkan gagasan-gagasan pada diskusi tentang isu-isu ras dan homoseksualitas yang pelik di Amerika Serikat pada tahun 1960-an. Agar dapat mendekati permasalahan yang kompleks ini, penelitian membahas novel karangan James Baldwin berjudul Another Country, yang menantang supremasi kulit putih dengan pemikiran-pemikirannya perihal identitas pribadi dan sosial. Pada penelitian ini Another Country dimanfaatkan untuk menunjukkan pentingnya pemikiran-pemikiran Baldwin tentang identitas personal dan sosial, berkaitan dengan pengenalan dam pengakuan diri seseorang sebagai manusia, yang menjadi lokus pendukung perubahan sosial yang diperlukan untuk terciptanya keselarasan hubungan-hubungan di Amerika Serikat. Penelitian ini mencoba untuk menganalisis kehidupan dan karya Balwin terhadap perkembangan politik pada masanya, dan dengan meminjam konsep-konsep identitas, untuk menunjukkan bagaimana dikotomi warga berkulit putih dan hitam adalah pengalaman-pengalaman hidup Baldwin yang paling mengganggu, namun bermakna. Penelitian ini juga pada akhirnya menunjukkan bahwa dengan mempelajari Baldwin sebagai individu dan anggota masyarakat, kita dapat menafsirkan eksistensi dan ekstensi dikotomi yang tidak berterima tersebut: keunggulan warga berkulit putih disamakan dengan keumuman heteroseksualitas dan kemarjinalan warga berkulit hitam dengan keterasingan homoseksualitas.

Penelitian ini mencoba untuk ikut menyumbangkan gagasan-gagasan pada diskusi tentang isu-isu ras dan homoseksualitas yang pelik di Amerika Serikat pada tahun 1960-an. Agar dapat mendekati permasalahan yang kompleks ini, penelitian membahas novel karangan James Baldwin berjudul Another Country, yang menantang supremasi kulit putih dengan pemikiran-pemikirannya perihal identitas pribadi dan sosial. Pada penelitian ini Another Country dimanfaatkan untuk menunjukkan pentingnya pemikiran-pemikiran Baldwin tentang identitas personal dan sosial, berkaitan dengan pengenalan dam pengakuan diri seseorang sebagai manusia, yang menjadi lokus pendukung perubahan sosial yang diperlukan untuk terciptanya keselarasan hubungan-hubungan di Amerika Serikat. Penelitian ini mencoba untuk menganalisis kehidupan dan karya Balwin terhadap perkembangan politik pada masanya, dan dengan meminjam konsep-konsep identitas, untuk menunjukkan bagaimana dikotomi warga berkulit putih dan hitam adalah pengalaman-pengalaman hidup Baldwin yang paling mengganggu, namun bermakna. Penelitian ini juga pada akhirnya menunjukkan bahwa dengan mempelajari Baldwin sebagai individu dan anggota masyarakat, kita dapat menafsirkan eksistensi dan ekstensi dikotomi yang tidak berterima tersebut: keunggulan warga berkulit putih disamakan dengan keumuman heteroseksualitas dan kemarjinalan warga berkulit hitam dengan keterasingan homoseksualitas.

James Baldwin, in his landmark essay “My Dungeon Shook,” says that white Americans are “still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.” This open letter explores this history on a personal level. Taking notes from Baldwin’s indictments of whiteness in Another Country and The Fire Next Time, this essay explores how white people, despite claims of deniability, become culpable, complicit, and ensnared in their racial privilege. By reading Baldwin’s work through a personal lens, it implores fellow white readers and scholars of Baldwin to begin examining the myths of America by first examining themselves.

The skyline of New York projects a dominant presence in the works of James Baldwin—even those set elsewhere. This essay analyzes the socio-spatial relationships and cognitive maps delineated in Baldwin’s writing, and suggests that some of the most compelling and intense portrayals of New York’s psychogeographic landscape vibrate Baldwin’s text. In The Price of the Ticket (1985), Baldwin’s highly personalized accounts of growing up in Harlem and living in New York map the socio-spatial relationships at play in domestic, street, and blended urban spaces, particularly in the title essay, “Dark Days,” and “Here Be Dragons.” Baldwin’s third novel, Another Country (1962), outlines a multistriated vision of New York City; its occupants traverse the cold urban territory and struggle beneath the jagged silhouette of skyscrapers. This essay examines the ways in which Baldwin composes the urban scene in these works through complex image schemas and intricate geometries, the city’s levels, planes, and perspectives directing the movements of its citizens. Further, I argue that Baldwin’s dynamic use of visual rhythms, light, and sound in his depiction of black life in the city, creates a vivid cartography of New York’s psychogeographic terrain. This essay connects Baldwin’s mappings of Harlem to an imbricated visual and sonic conception of urban subjectivity, that is, how the subject is constructed through a simultaneous and synaesthetic visual/scopic and aural/sonic relation to the city, with a focus on the movement of the body through city space.

This article traces how the queer Black writer James Baldwin’s transnational palate and experiences influenced the ways he wrote about Black domestic spaces in the late twentieth century. In the 1960s and 1970s, while Black feminist cooks and writers like Edna Lewis, Jessica B. Harris, and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor developed new theories of soul food in relation to the Black American community and broader American cuisine, Baldwin incorporated these philosophies and transnational tastes into his lifestyle and works. He traveled and worked around Europe, settling in places like Paris, Istanbul, and Saint-Paul de Vence for years at a time. In Saint-Paul de Vence, where he spent his last years, he set up his own welcome table, at which he hosted internationally renowned guests and shared his love of cuisine. Inevitably, Baldwin’s passion for cooking and hosting meals became a large, though scholarly neglected, component of his novels and essays. In his novels Another Country, which he finished in Istanbul and published in 1962, and Just Above My Head, which he finished in Saint-Paul de Vence and published in 1979, Baldwin’s depictions of food and Black kitchens take a queer turn. Instead of lingering on traditional Black family structures, these texts specifically present new formulations of intimate home life and reimagine relationships between food, kitchens, race, and sex in the late twentieth century.

Bagi Indonesia, Singapura telah lama dikenal sebagai negara perantara (intermediary) perdagangan untuk ekspor maupun impor. Secara umum sunk cost entry to export merupakan pertimbangan untuk masuk ke pasar ekspor, namun dalam kondisi terdapatnya perantara perdagangan apakah sunk cost entry to export tidak menjadi pertimbangan untuk masuk ke pasar ekspor? Untuk mengetahui hal tersebut dilakukan penelitian dengan tujuan untuk menguji apakah sunk cost entry berpengaruh atau tidak untuk ekspor Indonesia ke Singapura. Model penelitian menggunakan model histerisis Baldwin-Krugman dengan pertimbangan penggunaan data aggregate dan lonjakan nilai tukar. Metode yang digunakan adalah perubahan koefisien pada saat structural break sedangkan nilainya diestimasi dengan model regresi Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL). Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa sunk cost entry tidak memengaruhi ekspor Indonesia ke Singapura atau dengan kata lain tidak menjadi pertimbangan memasuki pasar ekspor Singapura. Temuan tersebut bermanfaat bagi eksportir dengan modal terbatas untuk menggunakan Singapura sebagai intermediary. Pemerintah sebagai fasilitator dapat menyarankan kepada eksportir pemula terutama eksportir dengan modal terbatas untuk menjadikan Singapura sebagai perantara dalam perdagangan. Singapore has been known as an intermediary country for Indonesia’s export and import trade. Sunk cost entry is one of the exporter considerations to enter an export market. However, if there is an intermediary trade, does sunk cost still become a consideration? The purpose of this study is to examine whether the sunk cost entry affects Indonesian export to Singapore or not. This study uses Baldwin-Krugman’s Hysteresis model due to an aggregate data usage and a surge in the exchange rate. This study uses the coefficient changes method since structural break is happening and its value is estimated by the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) regression model. The result shows that sunk cost does not affect Indonesian exports to Singapore, or in another word it does not become a consideration to enter Singapore markets. It is important that the exporters with limited capital use Singapore as an intermediary. The Government should propose beginner exporters to choose Singapore as the intermediary country trade.

Dermoscopy is a non-invasive diagnostic technique for the observation of pigmented skin lesions, permitting the recognition of morphologic structures not visible by the naked eye. The technique consists of placing mineral oil, alcohol or even water on the skin lesion that is subsequently inspected using a hand-held lens, a hand-held dermatoscope, a stereomicroscope, a camera, or a digital imaging system. The magnifications of these various instruments range from 6x even up to 100x.The fluid placed on the lesion eliminates surface reflection and renders the cornified layer translucent, thus allowing a better visualization of pigmented structures within the epidermis, the dermoepidermal junction and the superficial dermis. Male-pattern hair loss (MPHL), also known as androgenic alopecia and male pattern baldness, is hair loss that occurs due to an underlying susceptibility of hair follicles toshrinkage due to the influence of androgenic hormones. Male-pattern hair loss is the most common cause of hair loss and will affect up to 70% of men and 40% of women at some point in their lifetimes.Men typically present with progressive hair loss at the temples and vertex balding, whereas women typically present with diffuse hair loss over the top of their scalps.Platelet-rich plasma is defined as a volume of the plasma fraction of autologus blood with an above baseline platelet concentration usually more than 1,000,000 platelets/μL.PRPs regenerative potential depends on the levels of released GFs.Alpha granules of platelets contain GFs, which upon activation, are responsible for the initiation and maintenance of the healing response. PRP is known to carry more than 20 GFs and other protein molecules, such as adhesion molecules, chemokines, which interact to promote inflammation, cell proliferation, differentiation, and regeneration.In this study, the aim was to objectively assess the proposed therapeutic effect of PRP in treatment of AGA through measuring hair density using dermoscopic evaluation, hair pull test, gross pictures and patients satisfaction scale.The study included 30 patients of different grades of androgenetic alopecia, our patients were 15 males and 15 females ranging from grade Ι to ΙΙΙ by Ludwig classification for FPHL and from grade 3 to grade 6 for Norwood and Hamilton classification for male androgenetic alopecia of a total 6 sessions, 4 successive ones with 3 weeks apart of a total 12 weeks and 2 separate sessions, 24wk and the last evaluation was done 1 year later to the 1st session.The results were classified depending on the lasting effect of the PRP into short term results lasting up to 4 months from the start of the sessions which gave statistically positive values regarding the hair pull test results and hair follicles counted by dermoscope and the long term results starting from the 5th month up to 1 year duration from the start of the sessions which showed decline in both numbers of hair pull test and Which indicatesthe needfo retreatment or addition of another line o medical treatment e.g., minoxidil or finasteride. Also PRP can be considered ahumble tool in the treatment of AGA, as it is sufficient alone without the medical treatment.

The Australian government’s strict censorship regime of the mid-twentieth century banned a range of imported books, from popular to pornographic to literary titles. Drawing on the archived censor reports of the committee, this article will argue that Australia’s Commonwealth Literature Censorship Board is best understood within a tradition of conservative thinking about literature’s social function which can be traced back to Matthew Arnold. This paper examines the banning of James Baldwin’s Another Country as an example of politically conservative anxieties about race and sexuality influencing the impetus behind the censor’s decisions. It is argued that the Australian censorship project was underwritten by an ideological notion of what literature is, and how it should serve the interests of the state. To cite this paper please use the following details: Gawen, N. (2019), 'Conservative Censors, Banned Books: Reading the Reports of Australia’s Commonwealth Literature Censorship Board', Reinvention: an International Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 12, Issue 1, https://reinventionjournal.org/article/view/432/391. Date accessed [insert date]. If you cite this article or use it in any teaching or other related activities please let us know by e-mailing us at Reinventionjournal@warwick.ac.uk.

When the National Trust was established in 1895 its founders, Canon Rawnsley, Sir Robert Hunter and Octavia Hill, were, as Cannadine notes, “primarily concerned with preserving open spaces of outstanding natural beauty which were threatened with development or spoliation.” This was because, like Ruskin, Morris and “many of their contemporaries, they believed that the essence of Englishness was to be found in the fields and hedgerows, not in the suburbs and slums” (Cannadine 227). It was important to protect these sites of beauty and historical interest from development not only for what they were but for what they purportedly represented—an irreplaceable repository of the nation’s “spiritual values”, and thus a vital antidote to the “base materialism” of the day. G.M. Trevelyan, who I am quoting here, noted in two pieces written on behalf of the Trust in the 1920s and 30s, that the “inexorable rise of bricks and mortar” and the “full development of motor traffic” were laying waste to the English countryside. In the face of this assault on England’s heartland, the National Trust provided “an ark of refuge” safeguarding the nation’s cherished physical heritage and preserving its human cargo from the rising waters of materialism and despair (qtd. in Cannadine 231-2).Despite the extension of the road network and increasing private ownership of cars (up from 200,000 registrations in 1918 to “well over one million” in 1930), physical distance and economic hardship denied the majority of the urban population access to the countryside (Taylor 217). For the urban working classes recently or distantly displaced from the land, the dream of a return to rural roots was never more than a fantasy. Ford Madox Ford observed that “the poor and working classes of the towns never really go back” (Ford 58).Through the later nineteenth century the rural nostalgia once most prevalent among the working classes was increasingly noted as a feature of middle class sensibility. Better educated, with more leisure time and money at their disposal, these sentimental ruralists furnished a ready market for a new consumer phenomenon—the commodification of the English countryside and the packaging of the values it notionally embodied. As Valentine Cunningham observes, this was not always an edifying spectacle. By the late 1920s, “the terrible sounds of ‘Ye Olde England’ can already be heard, just off-stage, knocking together its thatched wayside stall where plastic pixies, reproduction beer-mugs, relics of Shakespeare and corn-dollies would soon be on sale” (Cunningham 229). Alongside the standard tourist tat, and the fiction and poetry that romanticised the rural world, a new kind of travel writing emerged around the turn of the century. Through an analysis of early-twentieth century notions of Englishness, this paper considers how the north struggled to find a place in H.V. Morton’s In Search of England (1927).In Haunts of Ancient Peace (1901), the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, described a journey through “Old England” as a cultural pilgrimage in quest of surviving vestiges of the nation’s essential identity, “or so much of it as is left” (Austin 18). Austin’s was an early example of what had, by the 1920s and 30s become a “boom market … in books about the national character, traditions and antiquities, usually to be found in the country” (Wiener 73). Longmans began its “English Heritage” series in 1929, introduced by the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, with volumes on “English humour, folk song and dance, the public school, the parish church, [and] wild life”. A year later Batsford launched its series of books on “English Life” with volumes featuring “the countryside, Old English household life, inns, villages, and cottages” (Wiener 73). There was an outpouring of books with an overtly conservationist agenda celebrating journeys through or periods of residence in the countryside, many of them written by “soldiers like Henry Williamson and Edmund Blunden, who returned from the First War determined to preserve the rural England they’d known” (Cunningham 229; Blunden, Face, England; Roberts, Pilgrim, Gone ; Williamson). In turn, these books engendered an efflorescence of critical analyses of the construction of England (Hamilton; Haddow; Keith; Cavaliero; Gervais; Giles and Middleton; Westall and Gardiner).By the 1920s it was clear that a great many people thought they knew what England was, where it might be found, and if threatened, which parts of it needed to be rescued in order to safeguard the survival of its essential identity. By the same point, there were large numbers who felt, in Patrick Wright’s words, that “Some areas of the nation had been lost forever and in these no one should expect to find the traditional nation at all” (Wright 87).A key guide to the nation’s sacred sites in this period, an inventory of their relics, and an illustration of how its lost regions might be rescued for or erased from its cultural map, was provided in H.V. Morton’s In Search of England (1927). Initially published as a series of articles in the Daily Express in 1926, In Search of England went through nine editions in the two and a half years after its appearance in book form in 1927. With sales in excess of a million copies, as John Brannigan notes, the book went through a further twenty editions by 1943, and has remained continuously in print since (Brannigan).In his introduction Morton proposes In Search of England is simply “the record of a motor-car journey round England … written without deliberation by the roadside, on farmyard walls, in cathedrals, in little churchyards, on the washstands of country inns, and in many another inconvenient place” (Morton vii). As C.R. Perry notes, “This is a happy image, but also a misleading one” (Perry 434) for there was nothing arbitrary about Morton’s progress. Even a cursory glance at the map of his journey confirms, the England that Morton went in search of was overwhelmingly rural or coastal, and embodied in the historic villages and ancient towns of the Midlands or South.Morton’s biographer, Michael Bartholomew suggests that the “nodal points” of Morton’s journey are the “cathedral cities” (Bartholomew 105).Despite claims to the contrary, his book was written with deliberation and according to a specific cultural objective. Morton’s purpose was not to discover his homeland but to confirm a vision that he and millions of others cherished. He was not in search of England so much as reassuring himself and his readers that in spite of the depredations of the factory and the motor vehicle, it was still out there. These aims determined Morton’s journey; how long he spent in differing parts, what he recorded, and how he presented landscapes, buildings, people and material culture.Morton’s determination to celebrate England as rural and ancient needed to negotiate the journey north into an industrial landscape better known for its manufacturing cities, mining and mill towns, and the densely packed streets of the poor and working classes. Unable to either avoid or ignore this north, Morton needed to settle upon a strategy of passing through it without disturbing his vision of the rural idyll. Narratively, Morton’s touring through the south and west of the country is conducted at a gentle pace. In my 1930 edition of the text, it takes 185 of the book’s 280 pages to bring him from London via the South Coast, Cornwall, the Cotswolds and the Welsh marches, to Chester. The instant Morton crosses the Lancashire border, his bull-nosed Morris accelerates through the extensive northern counties in a mere thirty pages: Warrington to Carlisle (with a side trip to Gretna Green), Carlisle to Durham, and Durham to Lincoln. The final sixty-five pages return to the more leisurely pace of the south and west through Norfolk and the East Midlands, before the journey is completed in an unnamed village somewhere between Stratford upon Avon and Warwick. Morton spends 89 per cent of the text in the South and Midlands (66 per cent and 23 per cent respectively) with only 11 per cent given over to his time in the north.If, as Genette has pointed out, narrative deceleration results in the descriptive pause, it is no coincidence that this is the recurring set piece of Morton’s treatment of the south and west as opposed to the north. His explorations take dwelling moments on river banks and hill tops, in cathedral closes and castle ruins to honour the genius loci and imagine earlier times. On Plymouth Hoe he sees, in his mind’s eye, Sir Walter Raleigh’s fleet set sail to take on the Armada; at Tintagel it is Arthur, wild and Celtic, scaling the cliffs, spear in hand; at Buckler’s Hard amid the rotting slipways he imagines the “stout oak-built ships which helped to found the British Empire”, setting out on their journeys of conquest (Morton 39). At the other extreme, Genette observes, that narrative acceleration produces ellipsis, where details are omitted in order to render a more compact and striking expression. It is the principle of ellipsis, of selective omission, which compresses the geography of Morton’s journey through the north with the effect of shaping reader experiences. Morton hurries past the north’s industrial areas—shuddering at the sight of smoke or chimneys and averting his gaze from factory and slum.As he crosses the border from Cheshire into Lancashire, Morton reflects that “the traveller enters Industrial England”—not that you would know it from his account (Morton 185). Heading north towards the Lake District, he steers a determined path between “red smoke stacks” rising on one side and an “ominous grey haze” on the other, holding to a narrow corridor of rural land where, to his relief, he observes men “raking hay in a field within gunshot of factory chimneys” (Morton 185-6). These redolent, though isolated, farmhands are of greater cultural moment than the citadels of industry towering on either side of them. While the chimneys might symbolise the nation’s economic potency, the farmhands embody the survival of its essential cultural and moral qualities. In an allusion to the Israelites’ passage through the Red Sea from the Book of Exodus, the land that the workers tend holds back the polluted tide of industry, furnishing relief from the factory and the slum, granting Morton safe passage through the perils of modernity and into the Promised Land–or at least the Lake District. In Morton’s view this green belt is not only more essentially English than trade and industry, it is also expresses a nobler and more authentic Englishness.The “great industrial new-rich cities of northern England—vast and mighty as they are,” Morton observes, “fall into perspective as mere black specks against the mighty background of history and the great green expanse of fine country which is the real North of England” (Morton 208). Thus, the rural land between Manchester and Liverpool expands into a sea of green as the great cities shrink on the horizon, and the north is returned to its origins.What Morton cannot speed past or ignore, what he is compelled or chooses to confront, he transforms, through the agency of history, into something that he and England can bear to own. Tempted into Wigan by its reputation as a comic nowhere-land, a place whose name conjured a thousand music hall gags, Morton confesses that he had expected to find there another kind of cliché, “the apex of the world’s pyramid of gloom … dreary streets and stagnant canals and white-faced Wigonians dragging their weary steps along dull streets haunted by the horror of the place in which they are condemned to live” (Morton 187).In the process of naming what he dreads, Morton does not describe Wigan: he exorcises his deepest fears about what it might hold and offers an incantation intended to hold them at bay. He “discovers” Wigan is not the industrial slum but “a place which still bears all the signs of an old-fashioned country town” (Morton 188). Morton makes no effort to describe Wigan as it is, any more than he describes the north as a whole: he simply overlays them with a vision of them as they should be—he invents the Wigan and the north that he and England need.Having surveyed parks and gardens, historical monuments and the half-timbered mock-Tudor High Street, Morton returns to his car and the road where, with an audible sigh of relief, he finds: “Within five minutes of notorious Wigan we were in the depth of the country,” and that “on either side were fields in which men were making hay” (Morton 189).In little more than three pages he passes from one set of haymakers, south of town, to another on its north. The green world has all but smoothed over the industrial eyesore, and the reader, carefully chaperoned by Morton, can pass on to the Lake District having barely glimpsed the realities of industry and urbanism, reassured that if this is the worst that the north has to show then the rural heartland and the essential identity it sustains are safe. Paradoxically, instead of invalidating his account, Morton’s self-evident exclusions and omissions seem only to have fuelled its popularity.For readers of the Daily Express in the months leading up to and immediately after the General Strike of 1926, the myth of England that Morton proffered, of an unspoilt village where old values and traditional hierarchies still held true, was preferable to the violently polarised urban battlefields that the strike had revealed. As the century progressed and the nation suffered depression, war, and a steady decline in its international standing, as industry, suburban sprawl and the irresistible spread of motorways and traffic blighted the land, Morton’s England offered an imagined refuge, a real England that somehow, magically resisted the march of time.Yet if it was Morton’s triumph to provide England with a vision of its ideal spiritual home, it was his tragedy that this portrait of it hastened the devastation of the cultural survivals he celebrated and sought to preserve: “Even as the sense of idyll and peace was maintained, the forces pulling in another direction had to be acknowledged” (Taylor 74).In his introduction to the 1930 edition of In Search of England Morton approvingly acknowledged that a new enthusiasm for the nation’s history and heritage was abroad and that “never before have so many people been searching for England.” In the next sentence he goes on to laud the “remarkable system of motor-coach services which now penetrates every part of the country [and] has thrown open to ordinary people regions which even after the coming of the railways were remote and inaccessible” (Morton vii).Astonishingly, as the waiting charabancs roared their engines and the village greens of England enjoyed the last hours of their tranquillity, Morton somehow failed to make the obvious connection between these unique cultural and social phenomena or take any measure of their potential consequences. His “motoring pastoral” did more than alert the barbarians to the existence of the nation’s hidden treasures, as David Matless notes it provided them with a route map, itinerary and behavioural guide for their pillages (Matless 64; Peach; Batsford).Yet while cultural preservationists wrung their hands in horror at the advent of the day-tripper slouching towards Barnstaple, for Morton this was never a cause for concern. The nature of his journey and the form of its representation demonstrate that the England he worshipped was more an imaginary than a physical space, an ideal whose precise location no chart could fix and no touring party defile. ReferencesAustin, Alfred. Haunts of Ancient Peace. London: Macmillan, 1902.Bartholomew, Michael. In Search of H.V. Morton. London: Methuen, 2004.Batsford, Harry. How to See the Country. London: B.T. Batsford, 1940.Blunden, Edmund. The Face of England: In a Series of Occasional Sketches. London: Longmans, 1932.———. English Villages. London: Collins, 1942.Brannigan, John. “‘England Am I …’ Eugenics, Devolution and Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts.” The Palgrave Macmillan Literature of an Independent England: Revisions of England, Englishness and English Literature. Eds. Claire Westall and Michael Gardiner. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.Cannadine, David. In Churchill’s Shadow: Confronting the Past in Modern Britain. London: Penguin, 2002.Cavaliero, Glen. The Rural Tradition in the English Novel 1900-1939. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977.Cunningham, Valentine. British Writers of the Thirties. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Ford, Ford Madox. The Heart of the Country: A Survey of a Modern Land. London: Alston Rivers, 1906.Gervais, David. Literary Englands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Giles, J., and T. Middleton, eds. Writing Englishness. London: Routledge, 1995.Haddow, Elizabeth. “The Novel of English Country Life, 1900-1930.” Dissertation. London: University of London, 1957.Hamilton, Robert. W.H. Hudson: The Vision of Earth. New York: Kennikat Press, 1946.Keith, W.J. Richard Jefferies: A Critical Study. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1965.Lewis, Roy, and Angus Maude. The English Middle Classes. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949.Matless, David. Landscape and Englishness. London: Reaktion Books, 1998.Morris, Margaret. The General Strike. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.Morton, H.V. In Search of England. London: Methuen, 1927.Peach, H. Let Us Tidy Up. Leicester: The Dryad Press, 1930.Perry, C.R. “In Search of H.V. Morton: Travel Writing and Cultural Values in the First Age of British Democracy.” Twentieth Century British History 10.4 (1999): 431-56.Roberts, Cecil. Pilgrim Cottage. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933.———. Gone Rustic. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1934.Taylor, A.J.P. England 1914-1945. The Oxford History of England XV. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.Taylor, John. War Photography: Realism in the British Press. London: Routledge, 1991.Wiener, Martin. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Williamson, Henry. The Village Book. London: Jonathan Cape, 1930.Wright, Patrick. A Journey through Ruins: A Keyhole Portrait of British Postwar Life and Culture. London: Flamingo, 1992.

At the start of the twentieth century, many young Australian artists travelled abroad to expand their art education and to gain exposure to the modern art movements of Europe. Most of these artists were active members of artist associations such as the Victorian Artists Society or the New South Wales Society of Artists. Male artists from Victoria were generally also members of the Melbourne Savage Club, a club with a strong association with the arts.This paper investigates the dual function of the club, as a space where the artists felt “at home” in the familiar environment that the club offered whilst they were abroad and, at the same time, a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London would have a significant impact on male Australian artists, as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world, which enhanced their experience whilst abroad.Artists were seldom members of Australia’s early gentlemen’s clubs, however, in the late nineteenth century Melbourne, artists formed less formal social groupings with exotic names such as the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, the Buonarotti Club, and the Ishmael Club (Mead). Melbourne artists congregated in these clubs until the Melbourne Savage Club, modelled on the London Savage Club (1857)—a club whose membership was restricted to practitioners in the performing and visual arts—opened its doors in 1894.The Melbourne Savage Club had its origins in the Metropolitan Music Club, established in the late 1880s by a group of professional and amateur musicians and music lovers. The club initially admitted musicians and people from the dramatic professions free-of-charge, however, author Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) and artist Alf Vincent (1874–1915) were not content to be treated on a different basis to the musicians and actors, and two months after Vincent joined the club, at a Special General Meeting, the club resolved to vary Rule 6, “to admit landscape or portrait painters and sculptors without entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club). At another Special General Meeting, a year later, the rule was altered to admit “recognised members of the musical, dramatic and artistic professions and sculptors without payment of entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club).This resulted in an immediate influx of prominent Victorian male artists (Williams) and the Melbourne Savage Club became their place of choice to gather and enjoy the fellowship the club offered and to share ideas in a convivial atmosphere. When the opportunity arose for them to travel to London in the early twentieth century, they met in London’s famous art clubs. Membership of the Melbourne Savage Club not only conferred rights to visit reciprocal clubs whilst in London, but also facilitated introductions to potential patrons. The London clubs were the venue of choice for visiting artists to meet their fellow artist expatriates and to share experiences and, importantly, to meet with their British counterparts, exhibit their works, and establish valuable contacts.The London Savage Club attracted many Australian expatriates. Not only is it the grandfather of London’s bohemian clubs but also it was the model for arts clubs the world over. Founded in 1857, the qualification for admission was (and still is) to be, “a working man in literature or art, and a good fellow” (Halliday vii). If a candidate met these requirements, he would be cordially received “come whence he may.” This was embodied in the club’s first rules which required applicants for membership to be from a restricted range of pursuits relating to the arts thought to be commensurate with its bohemian ideals, namely art, literature, drama, or music.The second London arts club that attracted expatriate Australian artists was the New English Arts Club, founded in 1886 by young English artists returning from studying art in Paris. Members of The New English Arts Club were influenced by the Impressionist style as opposed to the academic art shown at the Royal Academy. As a meeting place for Australia’s expatriate artists, the New English Arts Club had a particular influence, as it exposed them to significant early Modern artist members such as John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Walter Sickert (1860–1942), William Orpen (1878–1931) and Augustus John (1878–1961) (Corbett and Perry; Thornton; Melbourne Savage Club).The third, and arguably the most popular with the expatriate Australian artists’ club, was the Chelsea Arts Club, a bohemian club formed in 1891 by local working artists looking for a place to go to “meet, talk, eat and drink” (Cross).Apart from the American-born founding member, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), amongst the biggest Chelsea names at the time of the influx of travelling young Australian artists were modernists Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, and John Sargent. The opportunity to mix with these leading British contemporary artists was irresistible to these antipodean artists (55).When Melbourne artist, Miles Evergood (1871–1939) arrived in London from America in 1910, he had been an active exhibiting member of the Salmagundi Club, a New York artists’ club. Almost immediately he joined the New English Arts Club and the Chelsea Arts Club. Hammer tells of him associating with “writer Israel Zangwill, sculptor Jacob Epstein, and anti-academic artists including Walter Sickert, Augustus John, John Lavery, John Singer Sargent and C.R.W. Nevison, who challenged art values in Britain at the beginning of the century” (Hammer 41).Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the Chelsea Arts Club as his postal address, as did many expatriate artists. The Melbourne Savage Club archives contain letters and greetings, with news from abroad, written from artist members back to their “Brother Savages” (Various).In late 1902, Streeton wrote to fellow artist and Savage Club member Tom Roberts (1856–1931) from London:I belong to the Chelsea Arts Club now, & meet the artists – MacKennel says it’s about the most artistic club (speaking in the real sense) in England. … They all seem to be here – McKennal, Longstaff, Mahony, Fullwood, Norman, Minns, Fox, Plataganet Tudor St. George Tucker, Quinn, Coates, Bunny, Alston, K, Sonny Pole, other minor lights and your old friend and admirer Smike – within 100 yards of here – there must be 30 different studios. (Streeton 94)Whilst some of the artists whom Streeton mentioned were studying at either the Royal Academy or the Slade School, it was the clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club where they were most likely to encounter fellow Australian artists. Tom Roberts was obviously attentive to Streeton’s enthusiastic account and, when he returned to London the following year to work on his commission for The Big Picture of the 1901 opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, he soon joined. Roberts, through his expansive personality, became particularly active in London’s Australian expatriate artistic community and later became Vice-President of the Chelsea Arts Club. Along with Streeton and Roberts, other visiting Melbourne Savage Club artists joined the Chelsea Arts Club. They included, John Longstaff (1861–1941), James Quinn (1869–1951), George Coates (1869–1930), and Will Dyson (1880–1938), along with Sydney artists Henry Fullwood (1863–1930), George Lambert (1873–1930), and Will Ashton (1881–1963) (Croll 95). Smith describes the exodus to London and Paris: “It was the Chelsea Arts Club that the Heidelberg School established its last and least distinguished camp” (Smith, Smith and Heathcote 152).Streeton, who retained his Chelsea Arts Club membership when he returned for a while to Australia, wrote to Roberts in 1907, “I miss Chelsea & the Club-boys” (Streeton 107). In relation to Frederick McCubbin’s pending visit he wrote: “Prof McCubbin left here a week ago by German ‘Prinz Heinrich.’ … You’ll introduce him at the Chelsea Club and I hope they make him an Hon. Member, etc” (Streeton et al. 85). McCubbin wrote, after an evening at the Chelsea Arts Club, following a visit to the Royal Academy: “Tonight, I am dining with Australian artists in Soho, and shall be there to greet my old friends. How glad I am! Longstaff will be there, and Frank Stuart, Roberts, Fullwood, Pontin, Coates, Quinn, and Tucker’s brother, and many others from all around” (MacDonald, McCubbin and McCubbin 75). Impressed by the work of Turner he wrote to his wife Annie, following avisit to the Tate Gallery:I went yesterday with Fullwood and G. Coates and Tom Roberts for a ramble … to the Tate Gallery – a beautiful freestone building facing the river through a portico into the gallery where the lately found turners are exhibited – these are not like the greater number of pictures in the National Gallery – they represent his different periods, but are mostly in his latest style, when he had realised the quality of light (McCubbin).Clearly Turner’s paintings had a profound impression on him. In the same letter he wrote:they are mostly unfinished but they are divine – such dreams of colour – a dozen of them are like pearls … mist and cloud and sea and land, drenched in light … They glow with tender brilliancy that radiates from these canvases – how he loved the dazzling brilliancy of morning or evening – these gems with their opal colour – you feel how he gloried in these tender visions of light and air. He worked from darkness into light.The Chelsea Arts Club also served as a venue for artists to entertain and host distinguished visitors from home. These guests included; Melbourne Savage Club artist member Alf Vincent (Joske 112), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Trustee and popular patron of the arts, Professor Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Professor Frederick S. Delmer (1864–1931) and conductor George Marshall-Hall (1862–1915) (Mulvaney and Calaby 329; Streeton 111).Artist Miles Evergood arrived in London in 1910, and visited the Chelsea Arts Club. He mentions expatriate Australian artists gathering at the Club, including Will Dyson, Fred Leist (1873–1945), David Davies (1864–1939), Will Ashton (1881–1963), and Henry Fullwood (Hammer 41).Most of the Melbourne Savage Club artist members were active in the London Savage Club. On one occasion, in November 1908, Roberts, with fellow artist MacKennal in the Chair, attended the Australian Artists’ Dinner held there. This event attracted twenty-five expatriate Australian artists, all residing in London at the time (McQueen 532).These London arts clubs had a significant influence on the expatriate Australian artists for they became the “glue” that held them together whilst abroad. Although some artists travelled abroad specifically to take up places at the Royal Academy School or the Slade School, only a minority of artists arriving in London from Australia and other British colonies were offered positions at these prestigious schools. Many artists travelled to “try their luck.” The arts clubs of London, whilst similarly discerning in their membership criteria, generally offered a visiting “brother-of-the-brush” a warm welcome as a professional courtesy. They featured the familiar rollicking all-male “Smoke Nights” a feature of the Melbourne Savage Club. With a greater “artist” membership than the clubs in Australia, expatriate artists were not only able to catch up with their friends from Australia, but also they could associate with England’s finest and most progressive artists in a familiar congenial environment. The clubs were a “home away from home” and described by Underhill as, “an artistic Earl’s Court” (Underhill 99). Most importantly, the clubs were a centre for discourse, arguably even more so than were the teaching academies. Britain’s leading modernist artists were members of the Chelsea Arts Club and the New English Arts Club and mixed freely with the visiting Australian artists.Many Australian artists, such as Miles Evergood and George Bell (1878–1966), held anti-academic views similar to English club members and embraced the new artistic trends, which they would bring back to Australia. Streeton had no illusions about the relative worth of the famed institutions and the exhibitions held by clubs such as the New English. Writing to Roberts before he joins him in London, he describes the Royal Academy as having, “an inartistic atmosphere” and claims he “hasn’t the least desire to go again” (Streeton 77). His preference lay with a concurrent “International Exhibition”, which featured works by Rodin, Whistler, Condor, Degas, and others who were setting the pace rather than merely continuing the academic traditions.Architect Hardy Wilson (1881–1955) served as secretary of The Chelsea Arts Club. When he returned to Australia he brought back with him a number of British works by Streeton and Lambert for an exhibition at the Guild Hall Melbourne (Underhill 92). Artists and Bohemians, a history of the Chelsea Arts Club, makes special reference of its world-wide contacts and singles out many of its prominent Australian members for specific mention including; Sir John William (Will) Ashton OBE, later Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Will Dyson, whose illustrious career as an Australian war artist was described in some detail. Dyson’s popularity led to his later appointment as Chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club where he initiated an ambitious rebuilding program, improving staff accommodation, refurbishing the members’ areas, and adding five bedrooms for visiting members (Bross 87-90).Whilst the influence of travel abroad on Australian artists has been noted, the importance of the London Clubs has not been fully explored. These clubs offered artists a space where they felt “at home” and a familiar environment whilst they were abroad. The clubs functioned as a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London had a significant impact on male Australian artists as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world which enhanced their experience whilst abroad and influenced the direction of their art.ReferencesCorbett, David Peters, and Lara Perry, eds. English Art, 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Croll, Robert Henderson. Tom Roberts: Father of Australian Landscape Painting. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1935.Cross, Tom. Artists and Bohemians: 100 Years with the Chelsea Arts Club. 1992. 1st ed. London: Quiller Press, 1992.Gray, Anne, and National Gallery of Australia. McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17. 1st ed. Parkes, A.C.T.: National Gallery of Australia, 2009.Halliday, Andrew, ed. The Savage Papers. 1867. 1st ed. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1867.Hammer, Gael. Miles Evergood: No End of Passion. Willoughby, NSW: Phillip Mathews, 2013.Joske, Prue. Debonair Jack: A Biography of Sir John Longstaff. 1st ed. Melbourne: Claremont Publishing, 1994.MacDonald, James S., Frederick McCubbin, and Alexander McCubbin. The Art of F. McCubbin. Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing, 1916.McCaughy, Patrick. Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters. Ed. Paige Amor. The Miegunyah Press, 2014.McCubbin, Frederick. Papers, Ca. 1900–Ca. 1915. Melbourne.McQueen, Humphrey. Tom Roberts. Sydney: Macmillan, 1996.Mead, Stephen. "Bohemia in Melbourne: An Investigation of the Writer Marcus Clarke and Four Artistic Clubs during the Late 1860s – 1901.” PhD thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009.Melbourne Savage Club. Secretary. Minute Book: Melbourne Savage Club. Club Minutes (General Committee). Melbourne: Savage Archives.Mulvaney, Derek John, and J.H. Calaby. So Much That Is New: Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929, a Biography. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1985.Smith, Bernard, Terry Smith, and Christopher Heathcote. Australian Painting, 1788–2000. 4th ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2001.Streeton, Arthur, et al. Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1946.Streeton, Arthur, ed. Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton, 1890–1943. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989.Thornton, Alfred, and New English Art Club. Fifty Years of the New English Art Club, 1886–1935. London: New English Art Club, Curwen Press 1935.Underhill, Nancy D.H. Making Australian Art 1916–49: Sydney Ure Smith Patron and Publisher. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991.Various. Melbourne Savage Club Correspondence Book: 1902–1916. Melbourne: Melbourne Savage Club.Williams, Graeme Henry. "A Socio-Cultural Reading: The Melbourne Savage Club through Its Collections." Masters of Arts thesis. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2013.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim". —Lyndon B. Johnson Introduction The term “spin” implies manipulating the truth, and this concept, along with “spin doctoring,” is now common in media and public discourse. The prevalence of “spin zones” in American politics is undeniable; media outlets themselves, such as Bill O’Reilly’s “No Spin Zone” on Fox News, now run segments on the topic. Despite this apparent media certainty about what constitutes “spin” there is a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the term among those who study media and politics. This article will draw on previous literature to identify two competing yet overlapping spin zones in American politics: the media’s spin zone and the President’s spin zone. Highlighting examples from the two most recent American presidential election campaigns, the article will evaluate the interplay of these zones and the consequences for future campaigns. Spin Zones In the United States, the press and the President are engaged in a struggle over providing information. Ever since the Watergate Scandal, the media is increasingly expected to be a “watchdog” that informs citizens and keeps the Executive accountable (Coronel 13) The President, conversely, may attempt to use the power of his position to set the discursive agenda or frame the political debate in his favor. Furthermore, with the rise of multi-media access and information provision, the lines between the spin doctoring of the Executive and the media have become even more blurred. Because of the complexities of these overlapping spin zones, many scholars disagree on how to define and/or precisely measure these effects. The following section briefly describes the ‘spin zone’ tools of agenda setting, framing, and priming, and then considers the example of a candidate who failed to prime his negative evaluation and a President who primes his image and successfully counterattacks his negative evaluation. The literature recognises two separate, yet interrelated zones that are integral to understanding these media/presidential relations: what we term the presidential spin zone and the media spin zone. The interplay between these zones comes together around three key concepts—agenda setting, framing, and priming. A key difficulty for scholars is that the President, his electoral challengers, and the press are engaged in agenda setting, framing and priming, sometimes simultaneously. Agenda setting is a broad concept and refers to focusing on certain issues to the exclusion of others. Framing is defined as the decision by the news media to “emphasise certain elements to define the ‘public’s belief’ about social and political issues” (Van Gorp 488). Other scholars describe priming as “a disproportionate amount of public comments with the hope . . . of causing voters to base their selection among the candidates on [that] issue” (Druckman et al. 1181; see also Druckman “Framing Effects”; Nelson, Clawson and Oxley; Van Gorp). Candidates may also undertake “image priming,” which is proposed by James Druckman et al., as a tool that can be used to counteract negative candidate evaluations (1182–1183). The definition of the media spin zone is, in most instances, synonymous with priming. Defining the presidential spin zone is more complex. Clearly the presidential spin zone involves both the previously-discussed “issue framing abilities of the president” and how he “set[s] the agenda” (Miller and Krosnick 301; see also, Gamson and Modigliano, Baumgardner and Jones; Druckman, “Framing Effects”). Mark Rozell, for instance, found that the Ford and Carter administrations had difficulty controlling the public agenda since many issues were either beyond their control, or because the president and his advisors lacked the strategy or skill to affect media coverage. The Reagan White House however was able to use his “image” to control the media (85–86). Similarly, George W. Bush’s administration was able to implement policies concerning the invasion of Iraq after the 9-11 through “issue framing” scare tactics, which were constantly reinforced by media outlets (Kellner 643). However, the President can also be engaged in priming at any given time. In other words, the President (or candidate) may attempt to prime what the media has already spun about him/her. A problem, of course, is that the President or candidate, in attempting to prime an issue that has already been spun in a sense tacitly admits they have lost the opportunity to set the agenda in the first place. However, this is when he can seize the aforementioned opportunity to use “image priming” to counterattack the media. In the examples that follow we examine whether the President or candidate can use priming to effectively counterattack the media spin zone, with a focus on two political tools that have been historically reserved for the President or candidates, namely, holding the base and wedge issues. Holding the Base and the Media Spin Zone Holding the base has been defined as a way in which candidates or Presidents can use the media to strengthen support among voters who already identify with their political party (Iyengar and McGrady 246). A classic example of this is the 1984 Reagan/Bush re-election campaign, the “The Bear.” This featured a bear in the woods that “some” could “see” and others didn’t “see at all” which was an implicit threat regarding Soviet communism and a reminder that Reagan was tough on foreign policy (“The Bear”). However, the evidence indicates that the media has increasingly begun “holding the base” on its own to facilitate its partisan framing and priming of candidates or Presidents. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack advertisements on 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is a key example of a media attempt to “hold the base.” In these advertisements, former “Swift Boat Veterans attack[ed] his [Kerry’s] military record” (Muravchik A17). While this initiative began as a means to collect Republican donations, Shanto Iyengar and Jennifer McGrady maintain that the amount was “trivial” and that the real impact came with “the torrent of news reports across the country” (150). Indeed, Kathleen Jamieson and Joseph Capella found that by August 2004, “viewers of Fox News were more likely than other network viewers to say that candidate John Kerry did not earn his Vietnam medals” (279). Their evaluation of this data demonstrated the power of the media spin zone: “He (Limbaugh) employs intense language, disparaging information and negative framing to distance perceptions of the Democratic candidate from those of the anointed Republican candidate” (Jamieson and Capella 228). The coverage of disputes surrounding Kerry’s military record was augmented by the media’s simultaneous coverage of the threat of terrorism. This priming “in the media continued, reaching a high peak of 55 threat messages in August 2004, a month later 25% of the public was very concerned about another major terrorist attack in the US—two months before the presidential election” (Nacos, Bloch-Elkon and Shapiro 120). Both President Bush and Candidate Kerry acknowledged that their respective win/loss could be attributed in some measure to the press coverage of the “war on terror” (Nacos, Bloch-Elkon and Shapiro 124). While questions loomed about his military experience against the backdrop of the war on terror, Senator Kerry won the first two Presidential debates by significant margins. Alec Gallup and Frank Newport suggested that the Kerry camp had “won the spin contest … to characterize their own candidate as the winner” (406). So, what happened to Kerry? The media spin zone stopped him. The presidential debate wins were 30 September 2004 and 8 October 2004, respectively. Iyengar and McGrady demonstrate that before the debates even began the number of Swift Boat veteran stories primed in the national and international press went from under 100 to over 500 (151). According to Kim Fridkin et al. the media’s spin was a significant factor in the third debate. They found that media coverage concerning Senator Kerry’s response to one question on whether homosexuality was a choice affected citizens’ evaluations of the candidate. In the post debate coverage, the tone “in newspapers, on the Internet, and on television was uniformly negative in its assessment of Senator Kerry’s comments” (Fridkin et al. 30). The impact of this negative framing was sufficiently strong to override positive evaluations of Kerry held by those who watched the debate. In sum, the “perfect storm of media coverage lessened the bounce that Senator Kerry received from the actual debate and led people to develop negative impressions of Kerry a mere three weeks before Election Day” (Fridkin 43). Despite these liabilities, Kerry should have counterattacked the media spin zone. He should have “counterpunched,” as noted by Drew Westen, priming the media that he was “a different kind of Democrat”—“one who knows when it’s time to take off the gloves” (337). Westen’s advice is echoed in Druckman’s call for further research in this area as well as by his own research findings. The media’s framing and priming led to negative evaluations of Kerry, which afforded him the opportunity to prime his “image” in a counterattack, as Druckman suggests (1183). Overcoming the Wedge Issues of the Media Spin Zone President Obama, however, orchestrates a different outcome in dealing with the media spin zone attack against him which centered on a “wedge” or “us verses them” issue. Iyengar and McGrady note that “wedge issues are designed to pit groups against each other, to appeal to voters’ sense of group identity” (145). However, they define wedge issues within the context of presidential spin zones; thus, the candidate or the president would be framing the “us versus them” topic. In this instance, the media framed a wedge issue, the status of President Obama’s citizenship, against him. In this case the birther movement, oft-promoted by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, argued that President Obama was not a US citizen. This issue became so prominent that it was soon adopted by the media spin zone. The media framing demanded proof in addition to the short form birth certificate that the President had already released (Wilson 109). For his part, President Obama handled the media spin zone’s wedge issue with great aplomb, responding in a brief statement to the public on 27 April 2011: “We do not have time for this kind of silliness” (Shear). Moreover, he did not alienate the media for framing the birther movement, but he placed the blame implicitly on Donald Trump who had taken up the birther gauntlet thrown down by Rush Limbaugh. It was “clearly Trump” he was priming when he indicated that he did not want to be “distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers” (Shear). Moreover, his strategic focus on “silliness” is an illustration of “image priming”. He did not allow himself to be drawn into the race-baiting or religious controversy that was a component of some of the media talk show discussions. The Washington Post reported after Obama’s speech that the percentage of Americans who questioned his legitimacy to serve as President dropped from 20% to 10%—thus legitimating his choice to address the nation. This result meant that the President responded to an attack from the media spin zone with a counterattack of his own; he effectively counterattacked to prime his image. Interestingly, Stephen Ansolobehare and Iyengar have indirectly demonstrated the efficacy of counterattacks in presidential spin zone situations by evaluating situations where one candidate attacks another and the “victim” of the attack either, does not respond, responds with a positive message or responds with a counterattack (143). They found overwhelming evidence that voters prefer their party’s candidate to counterattack rather than be victimised. Conclusion In this paper we have furthered the call for conceptual clarity in the field by joining Druckman et al. in emphasising the need for more research on “image priming” on the part of candidates and Presidents in the interplay between the press and the presidency. If used properly, image priming seems a viable way for the presidency to counterattack against media framing and priming, but squandered opportunities may irreparably harm candidates. President Obama faced a difficult wedge issue that had undercurrents of both racial and religious tensions, but he deftly avoided those issues and found a way to “use Trump as a foil and present the president as a more serious leader” (Shear). His counterattack against the wedge used by the media spin zone was successful. Senator Kerry, on the other hand, failed to counterattack the media spin zone’s rallying of the base. His silence allowed the media to generate both issue and image frames and priming against him. This is an important lesson for future candidates and presidents and the media and presidential spin zones are important topics for further research. References Ansolabehare, Stephen, and Shanto Iyengar. Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate. New York: Free Press, 1995. Baumgardner, Frank, and Bryan D. Jones. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago, Illinois: U of Chicago P, 1993. Cappella, Joseph N., and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Coronel, Sheila S. “The Media as Watchdog.” The Role of the News Media in the Governance Realm 29–31 May 2008. 18 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Conference/Conference%20papers/Coronel%20Watchdog.pdf›. Druckman, James N. “On the Limits of Framing Effects: Who Can Frame?” The Journal of Politics 63.4 (2001): 1041–1066. ——. “The Power of Television Images.” The Journal of Politics 65.2 (2003): 559–71. Druckman, James N., et al. “Candidate Strategies to Prime Issues and Image.” The Journal of Politics 66.4 (2004): 1180–1202. Esser, Frank, Carsten Reinemann, and David Fan. “Spin Doctoring in British and German Election Campaigns: How the Press Is Being Confronted with a New Quality of Political PR.” European Journal of Communication 15.2 (2000): 209–239. Fridkin, Kim L., et al. “Spinning Debates: The Impact of the News Media’s Coverage of the Final 2004 Presidential Debate.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 13.1 (2008): 29–51. Funk, Carolyn. “Bringing the Candidate in Models of Candidate Evaluation.” The Journal of Politics 61.3 (1999): 700–720. Gallup, Alec M., and Frank Newport. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion in 2004. Lanham, Maryland: Rowland & Littlefield Publishers, 2006 Gamson, William A., and Andre Modigliani. “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 95.1 (1989): 1–37. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1974 Iyengar, Shanto, and Jennifer A. McGrady. Media Politics: A Citizens Guide. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. Iyengar, Shanto, and Donald R. Kinder. News That Matters. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Robert Y. Shapiro. “Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness.” Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000. Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, and Joseph N. Capella. Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Kellner, Douglas. “Bushspeak and the Politics of Lying: Presidential Rhetoric in the War on Terror.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 37.4 (2007): 622–645. Miller, Joanne M., and Jon A. Krosnick. “News Media Impact on the Ingredients of Presidential Evaluations: Politically Knowledgeable Citizens are Guided by a Trusted Source.” American Journal of Political Science 44.2 (2000): 301-315. Muravchik, Joshua. “Kerry’s Cambodia Whopper.” Washington Post 24 Aug. 2004: A17. Nacos, Brigette L., Yaeli Boch-Elkon, Robert Y. Shapiro. “Post 9-11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 1.2 (2007): 105–126. Nelson, Thomas E., Rosalee A. Clawson, and Zoe M. Oxley. “Media Framing of Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance.” American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 567-583. Rozell, M.J. “Presidential Image-Makers on the Limits of Spin Control.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 25.1 (1995): 67–90. Scheufele, Dietram A., and David Tewksbury. “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models.” Journal of Communication 57.1 (2007): 9–20. Shear, Michael D. “With Document, Obama Seeks to End Birther Issue.” New York Times 28 April 2011. 18 Oct 2011 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/politics/28obama.html›.“The Bear.” 4President TV 2 Oct 1984. 18 Oct 2011 ‹http://tv.4president.us/1984/reagan1984bear.htm›. Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice.” Science 211.4481 (1981): 452–58. Van Gorp, Baldwin. “Where Is the Frame: Victims and Intruders in the Belgian Press Coverage of the Asylum Issue?” European Journal of Communication 20.4 (2005): 484–507. Westen, Drew. The Political Brain. New York: Public Affairs, 2007. Wilson, John K. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011.