The Evil Condi Controversy: A RA^THER GATE TYPE EXPOSE'

Michele Malkin, God Bless Her Soul, noticed a photograph (on the left here) of Condoleezza Rice that was published in USA today. The photo really looks evil with those eyes glaring out from under that classic forehead. Malkin, always alert, thought there was something fishy and went in search of perhaps a different photo and came up with this one:

And I'd say that this is a big difference (and no, I'm not referring to the size of the photo.)



As she blogged about the obvious "editing" of the photograph, the blogosphere picked up on the story and lo and behold USA withdrew the "doctored" photo and said:

Editor's note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards."

It does have them 'ole evil eyes don't it... NOT!!!! This photo was retouched using fill flash of about +10 on the scale of the fillflash technique. Much better than the original above, but still no evil eyes. So, now we have to try and "sharpen" the same photo with fillflash to produce them 'ole evil eyes.

Well, with the edges sharpened and a little fill flash, she looks a mite angrier, but she for sure doesn't look like the photo at the top.

This is my last submission, it looks MUCH more like the initial photo. It was done by changing the pixels in the photos at the eyes. I'm not really good at the skill needed for half tones, but given time, I'm pretty sure I could have almost exactly reproduced the very top photo, or one damn near like it.

I have no expectations that this will prove a "smoking gun" like they did with the non-memos of Ra^therGate but I think it does prove that the MSM is full of crap and they think they can get away with all kinds of things (and, before blogs, they could to be honest.) But, not this time folks, not this time.

Tip of the GM Chapeaux to Sissy Willis

UPDATE: Discussed this photo with a friend this morning (10/27/05) and he commented, "Hey George, and you are an amateur at photoshop." Yeah, I am, and if I could do this, a pro ought to be able to do much better. But the USAToday pro got caught because of us pajama-clad amateurs.