Not what the pope had in mind.

It didn’t take long for the Sanders campaign to begin exploiting Bernie’s handshake with the pope. I’ve been saying all along that the Vatican trip was a big (expensive) publicity stunt. It was brilliant really, although risky, and Bernie should get good mileage out of it.

That is how the pope is describing his encounter with Bernie, by the way. Not a “meeting” but a handshake done out of courtesy.

Anyway, the pope is now a part of Bernie’s online promotion strategy — this is what’s floating around the internets right now in a big way:

Exploiting the pope.

Anyone who knows a little bit about advertising theory would have a field day with this image, and I’m off to work now so don’t have much time. But here are just a few things I learned in my excellent Canadian education about how to deconstruct messaging so as not to be manipulated by the media:

1 — Bernie’s logo is affixed directly on the image of the pope interacting with a child and looking very kind. The logo placement is designed to firmly associated Bernie with the pope, and also with the kindness of the pope. It’s a one-two punch. And the logo placement also suggests that the campaign is responsible for the content, emotional and visual, of the image.

2 — The words quoted are essentially blurry rhetoric, sounding very Bernie-esque, or pope-like, whichever you prefer. And that’s the point — whose words are these? There are no quotes and the words are not attributed to either very clearly, although if we look closely, there is a dash that might mean the words belong to the pope. However, the Pope’s name is placed in a dark box, which separates it from the main text which has a light background. And it’s Bernie’s name which is contained inside the quote box, ie same color background, and it has the traditional placement for authors, albeit with the dotcom disclaimer, a disclaimer which also confirms the political nature of the image. The underlying message of the text portion is this: Bernie and the pope say the same things, this could be either of them. They both say wonderful things that sound nice.

This whole image, photo and text combined, has one goal - blending the two together into the concept of a sort of “Pope Bernie.” In other words, to encourage our subconscious to make this leap: bernie = Catholic pope. Now no one would rationally think this, but advertising is not rational, it’s deliberately not rational, with good reason. Subliminal messaging works best. You can’t look at this image without feeling the bern.

I have to wonder if this is what the pope had in mind. Using the photos of others in political advertising is not normally done without permission, for obvious reasons. I’m not sure if the pope approved this message, but I somehow doubt it. I could be wrong.