X Marks The Bias Spot

Unbelievable!!

Mary Katherine @ Hugh Hewitt's has more:

"Not much of an "official statement," as Colmes called it:

"Responding to TVNewser's request for comment this evening, a CNN spokesperson explained: "This was a technological malfunction, not an issue of operator error. A portion of the switcher experienced a momentary glitch."

Considering how suspect the X incident looks, I think we deserve just a little more than that-- especially those of us who remember this little incident.  Bias? What bias?"

Brian Maloney has a commenter who seems to believe in fairness towards the bias MSM, and says:

"I believe it was Napoleon who said "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence".

Did he also say a big AHEM after that? 

The video from The Political Teen, is HERE, (not the original but a good illustration) and the White House Transcript here, more from Jay @ Stop The ACLU, and Wizbang.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin: "Here's background on FCC law and subliminal messages (via Free Republic)

SCROLL RIGHT DOWN FOR NOV.23RD UPDATES.  AN EXCLUSIVE ON A CNN TAPE CREDITED TO BILL QUICK @ THE DAILY PUNDIT.

Lorie Byrd @ Polipundit is not impressed, norty Ed Driscoll takes it one step further and California Conservative is saying "yeah right".

LATEST UPDATE via John Hawkins @ Right Wing News: "This is the vice president of the United States. It is rather serious to be putting black 'Xs' over his face," online journalist Matt Drudge said on tonight's "Hannity & Colmes" program on the Fox News Channel. "I felt it rather alarming that this is subliminally being sent out over the airwaves. ... I'm just knocked out."

The technical glitch summary by Flopping Aces., who remains unconvinced.

Michelle Malkin gets an email from someone with apparent technical knowledge who says, "It's possible it was a mistake. It isn't likely it was a mistake."

EVEN LATER UPDATE:  CNN 's managment have launched an investigation with the main question being: "Who had the graphic sitting in the key signal? Who generated the 'X'?"

The Political Teen weighs in on the possibilities, with Robot Guy coming to his defence on the issue of the video tape he provided. Much a do about nothing, and frankly evidently done in good faith.

NOV 23RD UPDATE ON AN EXCLUSIVE CNN TAPE DON'T MISS IT.

FOR THE LATEST ON THE CNN TAPE READ MY NOV 23RD ARTICLE  'The CNN Tape Exclusive on Cheney's X'.

FROM MY NOV 23RD ARTICLE LINKED ABOVE: THE LATEST FROM A CNN INTERVIEW WITH THEIR DIRECTOR OF TECHNICAL OPERATIONS :

    […]Joining me to explain what happened Steve our CNN director of technical operations.

    We’re putting you on the hot seat here.

    People at home are watching Vice President Dick Cheney.

    What happened?

    What were we trying to create behind the scenes?

  At the end of the speech the plan was to do, to have a CNN logo up on the screen and use that as the way of getting back from the speech back to you on camera and one of the many graphics we use here at CNN."

A CNN logo what is he talking about? When was the last time we saw a CNN logo come up after a live speech. It's time for another one of those AHEM moments....

HERE IS A DIFFERENT OFFICIAL EXPLANATION FROM CNN: "The "X" image, a place-holding marker used by technicians to cue up graphics, is not supposed to be visible to viewers but was inadvertently projected onto the screen by a malfunction in a "switcher" device, they explained."

Jeff Goldstein @ Protein Wisdom is discussing some of the substance from Vice President Cheney's speech. Trust him to get all serious now.

"It is becoming clear that the Dems are trying to get out ahead of predictable post-election troop withdrawals and frame them as coming from a position of weakness rather than success. The administration who has done the hard work and stayed the course in Iraq throughout this divisive an poisonous political atmosphere needs to remind people that the successes that will soon become evident in Iraq are a result of its steadfastness to its commitments and its plan to begin excising the Islamist cancer from the free world."

A very interesting article from the great Mark Steyn: Listen to The Word on the Arab Street,, published in the U.K. Telegraph today:

"Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.

As 9/11 fades into the past, that's an increasingly hard argument to make. Taking your ball and going home is a seductive argument in a paradoxical superpower whose inclinations on the Right have a strong isolationist streak and on the Left a strong transnational streak - which is isolationism with a sappy face and biennial black-tie banquets in EU capitals. Transnationalism means poseur solutions - the Kyotification of foreign policy.

So, just as things are looking up on the distant, eastern front, they're wobbling badly on the home front. Anti-Bush Continentals who would welcome a perceived American defeat in Iraq ought to remember the third front in this war: Europe is both a home front and a foreign battleground - as the Dutch have learnt, watching the land of the bicycling Queen transformed into 24-hour armed security for even minor municipal officials. In this war, for Europeans the faraway country of which they know little turns out to be their own. Much as the Guardian and Le Monde would enjoy it, an America that turns its back on the world is the last thing you need."

LATEST NEWS JUST IN:  "Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable" from the AP, and The NYT who are of course at the ready. Jeff Goldstein @ Protein Wisdom weighs in:

"Well, it strikes as largely a symbolic gesture of reconciliation—and one that doesn’t conflict at all, so far as I can tell, with the Bush Administration plan for Iraq; in fact, the timetable, such as it is, is not really a timetable at all—but rather a statement of goals disguised as a rough timetable, something that provides political cover for everyone involved:  for the Iraq leadership, the gesture appeases the Sunnis; for the Arab world, the gesture plays as a sign of reconciliation and a feint toward a post-war pardon for Sunnis who have fought in the resistance; for the US, the gesture gives the Dems the word they want to hear, “timetable,” which they can take credit as having agitated for as part of an “exit strategy”; and for the Bushies, it’s business as usual:  the plan, after all, has always been to draw down troops once the Iraqis can fend for themselves—and our judgment on that account will go a long way toward convincing the Iraqis when it is time for us to go.

Having said all that, of course we should take seriously the Iraqis wishes once they have an official government in place.  I suspect they know what it’s in their best interest, and will want some level of US troops in place for quite a while."

In other words:  stay the course; win the war; leave once Iraq is stable and free.  There’s your exit strategy—just as it has always been."

Omar @ Iraq The Model, whose opinion I highly value has this to say on the Iraq timetable subject:

"The right time to start negotiating the timetable between the US and Iraq will be after the formation of the new government that is to be elected next month; this government will certainly be a true representative of the people and will have the full authority of a government that will last for 4 years.

If this moves as I’m expecting here, we will deal a powerful blow to foreign terrorism and to dictatorships in the neighborhood that want to destroy Iraq.
Giving everyone the chance to have their say under the law will certainly isolate terrorism and consequently reduce its power but not ending it."

The Pajama Media, formerly known as OSM formerly known as Pajama Media, has a one stop round up.

Comments

[spiritofecstasy]

I agree with the last comment. It is a childish prank instinctively designed to get ratings and embolden the fringe.
I don't believe it was any more accidental then the September 2001 town meetings on CNN where they asked inverted questions such as; Why do they hate us!

The questions should have been: Why don't we hate THEM!?! Why don't we hate CNN!?!

I know he's having fun but Turner should sue his psychiatrist.

[jeff stiles]

Our opponents (including the liberal mainstream media) can't defeat us in a battle of ideas, so they resort to these childish, immature tactics. Shame, shame.