Sunday, September 16, 2007

A Caption's Worth A Thousand Words

Sometimes the captions tell you the most. It's been increasingly apparent over the last year or so which son of Sheikh Mohammed, Ruler of Dubai, has been anointed the successor to his father. Shaikh Hamdan is the one it appears. Billboards with his face on them, well attended poetry readings, his own flashy website (you really should click on this just to hear the 'heroic' music!), and now subtle but significant things like the caption on this photo tell the story.

If you read the caption you'll see that the naming starts with Hamdan on the right then shifts to the second from left (also a son of the ruler), then to the left-most (also a son of the ruler), and lastly to the second from right... the one guy who isn't a son of the Sheikh. I'm not a journalism expert but it sure seems like an odd way of labeling a picture except if you wanted to make sure the most important one gets named first and then carefully name the rest in descending order of importance.

By the way... the guy who won the gold medal isn't even pictured. :)

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