Title : An earful of conspiracies
link : An earful of conspiracies
An earful of conspiracies
I find myself in the strange position of having inadvertently helped QAnon and the Trumpers. They went shopping for conspiracy theories and somehow wandered into my store.
Long ago, toward the beginning of this blog's life, I wrote a widely-seen series of posts in which I posited that George W. Bush wore an earpiece during his first debate with John Kerry. As was (and is) my custom, I did not see that debate in real time. As I recall, my lady and I had a lovely night out in Calabasas, exploring the haunted Leonis Adobe and its picturesque environs.
Later, when we finally saw a replay of the debate, my lady called out: "What's that thing on Bush's back?"
I didn't know, but she was on to something. The same bulge showed up in various online photos.
The next morning, I did some research and found a photo of something odd in Dubya's ear.
During the debate, he had an odd moment where he anxiously said "Let me finish" even though no-one had tried to interrupt him.
And so I wrote the first of a series of posts which attracted much attention. The "Bush bulge" controversy pretty much made this blog. Perhaps a million people read Cannonfire during those weeks. A heady experience.
Did I take the bulge seriously? Well, yes and no.
By "yes," I mean that I did try to research the matter as thoroughly as possible. But I came to no hard-and-fast conclusions, and was quite willing to consider all explanations, whether benign or outre.
Eventually, a NASA imaging expert offered his opinion that, yes, there really was something beneath his jacket. So...something was going on. I was sure of that. But I was not sure what the "something" was.
At the same time, the lighthearted tone of my posts indicated that my attitude was not grave. It wasn't as though the Bush bulge was a life-and-death matter. That business made me giggle.
Late-night comics and Doonesbury took the idea and ran with it. More giggles.
For a while, my ladyfriend bore the nickname "Bulge Girl." When she finally got the chance to meet John Kerry after the election, she tried to ask him about the post-debate occasion when he placed a hand on Bush's back. No response; Kerry turned away quickly.
Over time, I noticed the same oddly-shaped something snaked its way beneath the jackets of other politicians. Even Hillary Clinton. It usually popped up during debates, though I've seen it on other occasions.
Eventually, I received a private message from a source claiming to be in the know. The source said that the bulge was caused by a security device provided by the Secret Service. The source offered no more information beyond that. Frankly, I do not want further information.
Was this source lying? Maybe; maybe not. Was he truly in a position to know? Maybe; maybe not. I have no way of making a determination. At this point, I doubt that I could even dig up the message, since I haven't used that email address in ages.
Let's just say that I decided to accept my informant's claim. It makes sense -- more sense than any competing theory.
That said, I did enjoy the idea of Bush receiving offstage instructions from his handlers. That "Let me finish!" moment was hilarious. And you must admit: There was always something odd about the weird stop-start way Dubya spoke.
Remember...? He had a bad habit of ending his sentences. Prematurely. Almost as if he was being told. What to say. One clause at a. Time.
A theory reborn! I bring all this up because the "earpiece" theory has been revived. Before the debate, Q and other Trump supporters have applied the idea to Joe Biden.
There are profound differences between what Q did and what I did. I presented evidence, while Q offered none. Also, I clearly labeled theory as theory, while Q offered theory as certainty. I was open to all possible explanations, while Q's followers allow for no counterargument: "It is so. Rome has spoken!"
Also, I had fun, and so did my readers. QAnon and other Trumpers aren't trying to make anyone snort and guffaw.
My ladyfriend has a message for Q:
"Get your own riff! I'm the one and only Bulge Girl! Don't take this from me!"(Sorry, Bulge Girl. Q steals all his riffs. Most of them first appeared in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That fascist fucker never had a truly original idea in his life.)
After the debate, a Trump-friendly conspiracist did offer an alleged piece of evidence: A short clip of Biden speaking during the debate which allegedly shows a wire poking out from beneath his coat's lapel. This video quickly zoomed all over Twitter and Facebook.
Politifact says that Biden's "wire" was actually a shirt crease. I'm not convinced that this explanation is correct. One thing bugged me about the video posted to Twitter: It was a shaky iPhone video-of-a-video, with the cel phone camera pointed at a teevee set.
That's a tell.
If you've ever played with After Effects, you may know what I'm talking about. One way to hide imperfect CGI is to degrade the image by playing the video clip on a large-screen television and re-photographing it with another camera -- preferably a really crummy camera, like the one in your cel phone. That's why so many "ghost" videos on YouTube look as though they were (as the saying has it) photographed with a potato.
(Here's a famous example of what I'm talking about. That video depicting an alleged spook called the Fresno Walker. No-one has ever seen the original footage; we've only seen the video-of-a-video version. There's a reason for that.)
Even if the Biden "wire" footage were on the level, I can think of a benign explanation.
Back in 1976 -- yes, I'm old enough to recall! -- there was a technical problem with the audio during one of the debates between Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter. The microphones died. For something like twenty or thirty minutes, the two men stared ahead in silence, not speaking to each other or to anyone else. Since neither man seemed particularly comfortable speaking in public, they were probably quite happy to stay mute, zone out, and become One With Everything. It was a very '70s thing to do.
(I used to think that the Ford-Carter encounters were the most cringe-worthy debates in history. Then Trump happened.)
(Okay, okay...Admiral Stockdale. I've met people who knew him. Actually, Bulge Girl met him several times; she worked at a photo lab that he occasionally patronized. Apparently, he was a wonderful guy. But the TV camera was not his best friend.)
As I learned more about the technical side of film-making, I came to understand that, in certain circumstances, it can be a good idea to have more than one audio feed. In other words, even when the talent is speaking into a microphone, it's also a good idea to wire him or her with a lavalier mic affixed with moleskin under the shirt. A wire from that lav mic would exit the shirt, snake up the torso and plug into a small, portable transmitter hidden in a pocket. Thus, if one audio feed fails -- as occurred during the Ford/Carter debate -- the other will still function.
Such a wire would have served a microphone, not a miniature loudspeaker. (That's what an earpiece is -- a really tiny loudspeaker.) If a wire had gone up into Biden's ear, you would have seen it. There's no way to hide something like that.
A final word about the debate. As you know, Trump acted like the proverbial Interrupting Cow throughout the debate. (Did he emit an actual Moo! or is my memory playing tricks on me?) The question is why.
In my previous post, I posited that he was on some form of speed. That's still the theory I favor. However, others have offered the idea that Trump did what he did as part of a strategy to trigger Joe Biden's stutter.
As everyone knows, Biden used to suffer from a sever stutter, though he has done a remarkable job of conquering the issue. A truly merciless verbal aggressor might cause the problem to resurface.
I don't stutter. Yet whenever I've had the misfortune of running into thuggish talkaholics like Trump, I found it impossible to respond in an erudite fashion. Frustration causes the synapses to fire out of sequence, and all you can do is sputter: "But...but...but..."
A certain type of barbarian will use a low trick of that sort and then tell himself that he has "won" an argument.
Just now, it has been revealed that Trump does not want the debate rules changed to allow the moderator to cut off a candidate's mic, even though that's what everyone in the country wants.
"Why would I allow the Debate Commission to change the rules for the second and third Debates when I easily won last time?" he tweeted.
Oh, that's hilarious. The tangerine turd really does seem to believe that there are polls out there which pegged him as the winner. This is more like it.
Trump's tweet buttresses the theory that he hoped to trigger a Biden stutter. If Biden had stuttered or paused oddly during the debate, rightwingers would have flooded Twitter with claims that Biden was either drugged or senile.
I say that the Commission must change the rules. Trump has proven that he cannot behave. Let Trump duck further debates if he wishes. I've no desire to witness another national horror like his last performance.
One final final word on the first debate. Did you note the contrast when the two men met their wives after the whole thing was over? Joe Biden was heartily -- one might almost say lustily -- embraced by a woman who clearly loves him. As for Melania and Donald...
...well, it was instructive to see them illustrate the concept of social distancing.
Thus Article An earful of conspiracies
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