The Snopes page says there are multiple photos, which would be plenty convincing to me, but the two they link to could just be a larger original and a cropped closeup.
Here’s a wide shot, which incidentally appears to show the same butterfly clip on his papers.
Here’s a shot of the luncheon before the summit. Q.E.D. 
Or, perhaps, My First Presidentiary wasn’t as wide of the mark as we might hope that it was.
The difference in handwriting styles makes me skeptical as well. I also notice that it’s a fairly young-looking hand. I’ve never paid any attention to W’s wrinkles, but it seems to me like his hands would be showing his age more than the photo would indicate. Strange.
Sorry, but the graphite pencil lead looks entirely too black to me to be real.
I don’t like the way the text on the printed paper fades around the outline of his hand.
And I can’t recall ever seeing any president write with a #2 bright yellow pencil. But really…do we care that the president has to take a leak? Was he making a remark about something someone was saying (ie, they were full of shit)? This looks like the margins of my class notes from almost any class I took with friends where we passed written remarks to pass the time while not paying attention to the lecture.
I retract the yellow pencil comment…I just found the picture that Larry Mudd meant to post (linked to a NYSE pic when I opened it)
Yes, apparently our president writes with a #2 bright yellow pencil :smack:
More photos of Bush at the UN yesterday here.
:::ahem::: Secretary of State.
I’m going to call fake. Wouldn’t there be some sort of security issue allowing a photographer to get that close to take a picture of someone’s notes? Even if he used a telephoto lens?
I’m going to be a little :dubious: until I get more info.
Rilch – Hey, it was late. :smack:
Huh. I made sure the links worked before I posted, because they’re tricksy ones. Must be time- or cookie- dependent.
Those pics can be seen here.
I don’t see any reason to doubt that the picture is real. Security issues? In a room with that many cameras and that many national interests represented, I think that SOP for security issues is not to expose any documents that contain information you wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing printed on a t-shirt in bold, friendly letters.
The grip on the pencil looks posed. I don’t hold a pencil quite that far up from the lead (not that I’m saying Dubya has to hold a pencil in the same manner as I do).
It just looks posed.
I’m sure that the journalist is normally a fine & upstanding citizen, but I’m calling fake. The note appears to alternate between several different handwriting styles. Frankly, it just looks like a bad Photoshop job.
Some of these objections are just plain weird. “The graphite is too black?”
Diceman, the fact that there are different handwriting styles on the note could mean what several people have suggested: someone else wrote the bathroom part, and Bush was responding.
If Reuters is vouching for the photo and explaining how it happened - in an IMHO thread about this, it’s explained that they needed to play with Photoshop to determine what the note said - I think it’s time to drop the quibbles.
There’s at least one other photo of Bush’s handwritten notes out there; shot at a cabinet meeting a year or two ago. It too raised eyebrows at the time, but I’ll be dipped if I can remember the subject at the time. Perhaps someone with a better memory could find it, and do a comparison?
Actually, I meant within each sentence. In the first sentence, pay attention to the mix of upper and lower cases. The sentence says, “I think I MAY NEED A BATHroom break?” Notice how “think” and “break” are written in lowercase, while “MAY NEED A” is written in caps. Stranger yet, “bathroom” is written with mixed cases: the questioner needs a “BATHroom” break.
In the second sentence, the words “Is this” are written in cursive, while “possible” is printed.
Incidentally, I agree that Bush is probably responding to a question that someone else is asking. No argument there.
My theory is that Rick Wilking submitted a photo of a boring, innocuous note, and some joker in Reuter’s computer labs decided to make it funnier with a little creative Photoshopping. I retract my comment that implied that Wilkins himself faked the note; if anything unethical is going on, it was probably the guy who “clarified” the picture that is responsible.
Maybe her back teeth were floating.
And Reuters is standing behind it because… ?
Reflex action. Remember, CBS defended that fake memo for a while before they kinda went “Oops! My bad!” and fired Dan Rather.