Three words…
Dan Rather…CBS
Wait, that’s 2 words. and three letters, but you get my drift.
Surely you see the difference here in that CBS received information that was forged,from an anonymous source, whereas a veteran Reuters employee actually claims and has signed this photo?
That’s more or less what Michael Jackson did once during his recent trial. Of course, he’s in his own little world, much more so than Dubya.
Also, I forget if anyone’s already brought up Bush the Elder in Japan, but I’m wondering: Was he perhaps diffident about asking to be excused, or did he just not have any warning?
Does it seem odd to anyone else that he would be signing the note, “W”? Or weird that he would be signing it at all?
Are you sure he is signing it?
Maybe he’s just in love with himself.
You mean anonymous as in passed to CBS by Bill Burkett via George Conn or Lucy Ramirez, depending on which story you believe and purportedly written by Jerry B. Killian?
Ummm. Yes. I do see the difference… :dubious:
Let me draw you a picture…
Dan Rather, a veteran newsman, published a story on a respected network. This does not guarantee the story is true.
I am saying that just because a veteran photographer took the pic and it was published by Reuters doesn’t mean it is beyond reproach.
So in other words, there is no definitive statement out there of who passed along the forged memo. No, say, signature at the bottom?
Perhaps. What you have yet to demonstrate is any real reason to doubt this photo, beyond your own incredulity.
It was given to them by Burkett.
No I don’t.
I mean yes I have…as have others.
:smack:
You and others have made statements that fail to understand photographic principles (not that I expect everyone to be a photographic expert), and calling into credulity his writing instrument, finally into “someone in the press was wrong before, they’d do it again!”. Not to mention there is no reason for Reuters to publish this signed photo if it is a forgery, which they would have to know it to be, given that it comes from within their agency.
Forgive me if I don’t find this compelling.
I forgive you.
I’m going to have to change my tune on this one. I’m not a photographer, it’s just that the strong gradient in focus just sang out “I’m fake !” to my untrained eye. I’ll defer the weird look of the photo to those who understand shallow fields and f-stops.
Every other photo in the galleries I’ve looked at was composed totally differently. Hats off to the photographer who was able to stand way back in the gallery and say to himself “I wonder what Georgie is writing ?”
And then I got a good look at the table; yeah, those are pencils on his right, with a stack of notepaper to boot.
It’s gotta be tough listening to a full day of blah-blah-blah and then getting up to deliver more of your own. Good luck for George that they didn’t catch him scratching his butt.
According to Reuters photo editor Gary Hershorn, Wilking didn’t know what the note said when he submitted the photo:
Although the burn tool is just spot-adjustment for exposure, some outlets are already running this under misleading headlines like President Bush Bathroom Break Note Photoshopped. In this sense, nearly all news photos are Photoshopped. Colour-correction, contrast adjustments, cropping – these are all routinely done with tools like Photoshop, but saying that an image is “Photoshopped” implies that it has been substantially altered from the reality that it represents.
Seriously, I have no idea why people feel the need to doubt that this happened. The guy needed to pee. This is something that happens to us all, several times a day. I wondered why they would choose to publish it (which may have been a bit naive, considering how much we’ve all been talking about it,) but I don’t get where the idea that it must be fake is coming from.
What’s more likely – that a photo editor at the top of his profession would throw his career away in order to pass a fraudulent image off for a laugh, or that a guy just needed to go to the bathroom?
Hey man- I am just breakin’ yer balls. No hard feelings.
Me--------> :wally
As far as Bush’s privacy goes, I first saw the note, as I think most of us did, posted in the middle of a group of dozens or hundreds on Yahoo news. It’s a curiosity at most.
We don’t know who wrote the bathroom break part. The caption does not say it was Bush and does not say who passed the note to him.
Yeah, it’s that darn urine-obsessed liberal media again. First they gave him a free pass on the Iraq war, now they took a picture of a note he’s writing where someone asks for a bathroom break. Why must they hound him so? 
Okay, Why the fuck does anyone really care to believe this is fake. Even if you are a Bush fan, what do you care? Dan Rather who did have a repuation to uphold took shady information from a shady source which had absolutely no risk in giving this kind of fake info. The only way for this to correlate to the Rather situation is if the Reuters photographer somehow got this “information” from a shady source. So Rather was basically sticking his neck out for something that was risky, but here the photographer himself had a reputation. Its not like he could say it was someone else’s work.
But even futher… Why does anyone feel its fake? Its obvious that the bathroom request wasn’t even made by Bush. It isn’t his handwriting, and he is simply responding.
To use the example of Rather is simply stupid, and makes no sense. It was validated by Reuters, and is further backed by the photographer himself. Its not speculation of what happened in the past, its a fucking photo. Jeez
I dunno - did you object last time he appeared on the evening news barbecuing at his ranch? Or jogging? How is that stuff any more newsworthy than writing a note?
Has anyone considered this scenario?
Someone slides the prez an “I gotta pee” note.
Before he passes it on to Condie, he thinks to himself “if we had a break here, I could make that phone call I’ve been worried about.”
So he adds, “is this possible?”
I’m no Bush fan, but I’m just sayin’.
What’s your basis for reaching this conclusion?
Not everyone, not even every person who holds high public office, is interested in high-quality writing instruments.
At large meetings such as diplomatic sessions at the United Nations, every seat is generally stocked with notepaper, pens, and pencils, as well as the documents needed for the discussion. And the pencils are most often ordinary, wooden pencils, the kind that a lot of people use, not just grade school students.
Even if someone has an expensive writing instrument in his or her pocket, especially someone who is not particularly concerned with using such instruments, when wanting to write a quick note, he or she will grab the nearest instrument at hand, which, in this case, was an ordinary wooden pencil.
Why is this doubtful?