Obama's people

What an extraordinarily awful bunch of portraits of "Obama's People" in the NYT's magazine. They look far worse in the actual magazine than on the website. I urge you to obtain a copy. It is a historical artifact. There is an accompanying article on the background to the project. It paraphrases Roland Barthes, as one would, but it doesn't tell me what I mainly wanted to know: which ointment did the make-up person smear on each subject before they were posed? They are shiny. They look like cadavers worked over by someone fired for incompetence by Madame Tussaud's. Many of them also appear to have been dipped from the waist down in a solution of some kind.

Night of the Living Dead isn't in it. Somebody please tell me what Larry Summers ever did to deserve this. Peter Orszag, Ken Salazar and Jim Messina, I advise you to sue. Ellen Moran is going to need counselling.

(I like the Tim Geithner, though. "Tim? Phone. It's the IRS with more questions.")