Here’s an interesting comparison of pro-labor posters from 1923 and now.
labor posters
These images are quite rich, really. The main trope in both is also the same one that Reagan famously used with his “I’t s anew dawn in America!” slogan. The rolled-up shirt sleeves is typically used by multi-millionaire politicians like Bush Jr. to hopefully draw parallels to da woikers . And Brownie, of Katrina-failure fame, as he was about to give a televised interview in the midst of that crisis, was advised by the PR people doing the filming to roll his sleeves up for the sake of this imagery.
But an interesting difference here is where the dawn is rising – the city in the first and anywhere-but-the-city-please in the second.
h/t Andrew Sullivan
Addendum: Notice the differing scale of the humans and backgrounds. The first figure is imposing over the background. If this guy doesn’t end up doing something heroic, he’ll think himself to have failed (though his wife will forgive him). The second fellow seems to be hoping that he might be able to turn things around with his new career in real estate sales. And that second graphic looks rather like a brochure from a bank, don’t you think? Whereas the first poster is THE visual representation you’d never find on a bank wall.
