Marionette

[jere7my]

One of K.'s students said that Bush, during the last debate, looked like a ventriloquist's dummy: like Karl Rove was crouching below the podium, making him answer questions he didn't really understand. This might not be far from the truth.

Salon.com has a debate picture of our "President" from behind that clearly shows an odd pucker in his jacket. To many, it looks a lot like a radio transmitter taped to his back, with a wire curving up over his right shoulder to his ear. This is pretty thin evidence, granted, and I'm probably contributing to yellow (or at least eggshell) journalism by repeating it, but it's fascinating if true, to quote Howard Cosell's head from Futurama. And it would explain a lot of the weird pauses.

Alternately, I'm willing to entertain Puppet Masters-type hypotheses.

Immanentize the eschaton, boys.



[ObSF: Interface by Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson and his uncle).]

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Excellent ObSF (appropriate, and I love the book).

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

And Kerry may have had notes or something. If you think about it, in their actual performance as President, they're always going to have teleprompters and cue cards and speechwriters and stuff, so aren't we getting a *more accurate* prediction of their performance if they sneak that stuff into the debates? ::grin::

Or...

[(Anonymous)]

My favorite response to the dueling cheating allegations is the

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My favorite response to the dueling cheating allegations is the <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001522.html"Language Log note</a> which examines Bush's pauses and concludes that the whole earpiece thing is not a necessary explanation. Oh, and that if he were getting an audio feed, the guy at the mic wasn't doing a very good job.

"As for the object that Kerry removed from his jacket pocket at the start of the debate, this accusation seems to be a more serious one. Preliminary results from the Language Log Labs image analysis department tend to support the hypothesis, first advanced by some sharp-eyed bloggers, that the object was a slim, rectangular can of whup-ass."

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; ,
-V.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hopping flists, came across the most-likely explanation for this I've heard: the "odd pucker" is due to his wearing body armor under his jacket. I have no idea where the panels and seams should be in a bulletproof vest, but it's a reasonable thing for the man to be wearing.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

Would he really wear body armor to stand at a podium for two hours in an extremely well-secured building? If the Secret Service can't guarantee that no one present--in as controllable a situation as a televised debate--can attack the president, they're really not doing their jobs.

[ccommack]

Maybe, but belt-and-suspenders, I guess. If I were president, I think I'd be wanting to wear kevlar every time I left the White House.