Piper Palin gives one-finger salute

A picture (top) has been doing the rounds showing Piper Palin, Gov. Palin's six-year-old daughter, apparently giving a boy the finger. Yes, it's a hoax. In the original (bottom), which can be found on the Alaska state website, it's clear that Piper has two fingers raised.



Photos Politics

Posted on Mon Oct 06, 2008



Comments

And two is better because...?

I cant seem to find an image of it (oh no, the internet fails me) but when Bush Senior was in Australia during Gulf War I, he went past some protestors in his motorcade.
He gave the 'V for Victory' sign, but didnt realise that not reversing it(ie, knucle side out), that 2 fingers is as good as just one when it comes to giving someone the bird.(In Australia).
I always wondered just what the protesters thought when the USA President drives past your protest giving you the finger as he goes.......
Posted by AussieBruce  on  Mon Oct 06, 2008  at  11:16 PM
I don't get the difference either, in the UK and Australia at least two fingers are just as offensive. It's hard to imagine by the look on her face what gesture she is trying to make in the real pic.
Posted by Caris  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  01:10 AM
Two fingers is just as offensive in the UK, it stems from the middle ages when the English archers used to taunt the French, showing they still had their shooting fingers, as the French would cut them off if they caught them.
Posted by mr royale  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  02:29 AM
While she probably knows what one finger means, I am sure she is not that up on foreign gestures to know that '2 fingers are as good as one'.
Posted by Madd Maxx  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  05:50 AM
How do you know the Alaska State web site didn't airbrush in an extra finger?

Lots of embarrassing stuff about Palin & Company has been scrubbed from the Internet (a la "1984") since McCain's surprise announcement of his running mate (such as Bristol's baby daddy's MySpace page, to cite the most notorious example).

I'm not saying that's what happened with this Piper picture (I have no evidence one way or the other), I'm just saying it's a distinct possibility.

Anyway, all of this ignores the real issue with this picture: What the heck is the deal with that coat Sarah Palin has on here? She looked really different before the GOP's costume designers started dressing her, didn't she?
Posted by Big Gary  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  07:39 AM
I'm sure Saturday Night Live could do something with this. Does Tina Fey have a daughter?
Posted by Captain Al  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  08:57 AM
If you look at the video footage, you can see that Piper is in fact saying 'Two beer, eh.' Don't ask me why she's speaking Canadian.

The supposed origin for the two-fingered salute is almost certainly hogwash, btw.
Posted by outeast  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  08:57 AM
I wanna know what's up with that coat too. I cannot avert my eyes from its hideousness.
Posted by Ostrakos  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  10:25 AM
Two is always better then just one!
Posted by Beasjt669  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  10:31 AM
I'm not sure why my comment from last night was deleted. I was simply making a joke about the younger Palin disagreeing with European integration via the bowfinger. It was a reference to The Sun's headline 18 years ago. Not only that, it's a pretty timely joke. I dispute this deletion by the historically ignorant website administration and will now repost last night's comment in full:

"Up Yours, Delors"

If I am again censored, I will make sad faces. Do you really wanna deal with sad faces? Didn't think so.
Posted by fuzzfoot  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  11:09 AM
Two fingers is offensive in the UK but the story that it's based on the French threatening to cut off their fingers is an urban legend.
Posted by Mark  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  11:51 AM
Who cares if two fingers is offensive in the UK? It's mostly meaningless in North America. Are we going to next start worrying about anyone outside of parts of Latin America (and perhaps elsewhere) using the thumb-forefinger-circle OK sign?
Posted by Joe  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  01:04 PM
I'm with Big Gary, I think the two-finger version is actually the phonied up photo. Look at Piper's face and the little boy's - the peace sign or "two" doesn't make any sense. Given that her mom is Sarah Barracuda - I'm sure she's seen that gesture before, many times.
I like Piper. She is my favorite - especially if she DID flip the bird at that little boy!
Those poor kids. Their mom is a wacko. Good thing she barely has any time for them or they could turn out just like her.
Posted by cswinst  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  01:45 PM
What the heck is the deal with that coat Sarah Palin has on here?
- Big Gary

What? It's obviously a respectable Republican cloth coat. 😉
Posted by Charybdis  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  04:47 PM
Charybdis, you're older than you look.

Republican, obviously.
Respectable? On what planet?
Posted by Big Gary  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  04:59 PM
No matter what gesture she's making there, Piper sure looks pissed.
Posted by mynameisnotimportant  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  06:59 PM
"Anyway, all of this ignores the real issue with this picture: What the heck is the deal with that coat Sarah Palin has on here?"

Damn, you beat me to a comment about the governor's coat.

I was hoping IT was the Photoshopped item in the photo.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Wed Oct 08, 2008  at  12:56 AM
I'm with the people who think that the bottom photo is photoshopped. You can see a knuckle which doesn't belong to the second finger, so does she have six fingers?
Posted by Mikkel  on  Wed Oct 08, 2008  at  01:42 AM
One in several hundred people is born with extra fingers:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1070549/I-born-fingers-hand-reveals-Bond-Girl-Gemma-Arterton-startling-interview.html

I doubt that Piper Palin belongs to this group, however.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Wed Oct 08, 2008  at  07:17 AM
I'm all good with making fun of any public official but keep the kids out of it. It is not their fault their parents choose this path. This picture isn't too bad but I remeber how people used to say how ugly Chelsea was or how people rip on the Bush twins for being regular college kids.
Posted by dply27  on  Wed Oct 08, 2008  at  03:24 PM
I'd think that there ought to be a number of pictures of the scene, considering that it was a public appearance by a major person in American politics. The place must have been swarming with photographers. Where are the other photos taken around this same time showing what was going on? For that matter, there's probably video footage of it.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Wed Oct 08, 2008  at  04:16 PM
i gotta go with picture # 1 being the real one. that woman in the upper right seems to be looking at the kid with some disapproval.
Posted by johnny boy  on  Thu Oct 09, 2008  at  05:27 AM
As far as I know, two fingers backward like that is the same as one finger. Not that a 6 your would necessarily know that, but you never know!
Posted by M  on  Thu Oct 09, 2008  at  11:13 AM
How do you know the index finger wasn't added to the original to cover up the her actually giving the finger?
You don't know for sure.
Posted by John  on  Thu Oct 09, 2008  at  01:08 PM
Ah BUT negativity about their kids is fair gain when the parents go out of their way trying to show them as a positive. If they can be discussed in a positive light its only fair that they be able to be discussed to the contrary.
Posted by Tim  on  Thu Oct 09, 2008  at  02:31 PM
"that woman in the upper right seems to be looking at the kid with some disapproval."

The woman who I take to be the boy's mother/grandmother/whatever, though, is standing there smiling away happily at everything. Perhaps the woman you're pointing out is just being blinded by Palin's fashion sense?
Posted by Accipiter  on  Thu Oct 09, 2008  at  03:18 PM
Accipiter - How do you that the old woman in the picture isn't just a senile old lady who smiles at everything.
Posted by Madd Maxx  on  Fri Oct 10, 2008  at  04:12 PM
"Accipiter - How do you that the old woman in the picture isn't just a senile old lady who smiles at everything."

How do we know much of anything, given that it's a single still image of a single instant taken from a single angle?
Posted by Accipiter  on  Fri Oct 10, 2008  at  04:24 PM
I gave both pics to one of our geeks, and he came back with a rather quick reply that the 2-finger picture is the fake.

Oh, the story about the English archers giving the 2-finger salute to the french? Completely true. I have friends from both countries and they are all well aware of that historical insult.
Posted by Anthony  on  Fri Oct 10, 2008  at  06:24 PM
Our geek gave some further info...

If you save the picture from the AK state webpage and load it into a picture editor, you can see the pixels that were modified for the 2nd finger. You'll notice the rightside line of that finger has pixels in a perfectly straight line. You'll also notice shading differences where someone didn't get the colors to match perfectly.

We couldn't see any of that on the 1-finger salute picture. It looks unmodified.
Posted by Anthony  on  Fri Oct 10, 2008  at  06:29 PM
"home schooled" I thought you knew.
Posted by LG  on  Fri Oct 10, 2008  at  06:59 PM
In the one-finger picture, part of the hideous floral pattern from Gov. Palin's coat <a >is distorted</a> right around where the second finger is in the other picture. Some of the little gray leaves are missing, and the flower is missing one petal. The picture with just one finger raised is the fake, with the second finger and part of the background behind it removed.

As for the pixels on the second finger all being in a straight line: <a >they're not</a>.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Sat Oct 11, 2008  at  12:03 PM
Check out the woman behind the guy in the blue hat who is behind the smiling, senile old lady. She's either mortified or bored out of her mind.
Posted by Madd Maxx  on  Sat Oct 11, 2008  at  06:48 PM
Showing my nerdiness here, but I just ran a software (JPGq) scan which can detect JPG image quality. (simple explain is that jpg's lose quality every time they are photoshopped and re-saved) Result was that the 1-finger salute has a higher (better) quality distortion factor than the "original." Translated, that means there is a high probability that the 1-finger salute is in fact the original. In fact, It makes it nearly conclusive.
Posted by pazooter in WA  on  Sat Oct 11, 2008  at  09:28 PM
I don't know why anyone would take the trouble to PhotoShop that picture and add the second finger.

It's just like when that chick Elizabeth PhotoShopped her head onto the photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini: http://cnbcsucks.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/some-chick-named-elizabeth-photoshopped-her-head-onto-sarah-palins-bikini-photo/
Posted by CNBC Sucks  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  01:00 AM
"Check out the woman behind the guy in the blue hat who is behind the smiling, senile old lady. She's either mortified or bored out of her mind."

It looks as though <a >she just glowers a lot</a>. From the numbering of the pictures, it looks as though she might have been looking at Piper with that expression for a while. Maybe she doesn't like kids?
Posted by Accipiter  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  01:05 AM
You don't need fancy computer analysis and things like that to see that there's a lot of the background missing from the one-fingered picture.

Here, I <a >put together comparisons</a> of pairs of close-ups from three different images.

The first pair is <a >from a completely different picture</a>.



It shows the part of the pattern on Palin's coat (hmm, nice alliteration there) that Piper's hand obscures in the later pictures. You can see the area in question, where that one flower is in the corner of the coat. It has two greyish leaves sticking up from it, almost reaching to the next flower up. The petals also make a sort of zig-zag pattern going back and forth between the edge of the coat and the leaves.

The second pair is from the two-finger version of the Piper photo.



Though her hand is over the flower from the coat pattern, you can still see the two greyish leaves and the petals of the flower fitting into the same proper shape.

Then there is the final pair, from the one-finger version of the photo.



All except for one small edge of the greyish leaves magically vanish. The petal pattern suddenly changes from in the first pair of pictures, cutting inwards where it should be angling back outwards. What it should look like is something like this:



Amazingly enough, all of these changes just coincidentally happen right where the picture would be changed if somebody cut out Piper's second finger.

So either Sarah Palin has a magical coat on which small portions of the pattern suddenly change, or else somebody edited out one of Piper's fingers and forgot to edit back in the background.

And as you can see, all the stuff about the one-finger picture being of "better quality" is nonsense, since it is nowhere near the same resolution as the picture it is being compared to.

Really, it just sort of annoys me that some people feel the need to try to make children look bad just so as to embarrass their politically-active parents. All the photo-op kissing of babies is bad enough without the need to take it to negative extremes.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  01:54 AM
The picture with the the 2 fingers is likely to be the photoshopped one. Check the clarity of the two pictures. The one with one finger is much sharper, better color, etc.

Who took the picture? Surely the photographer knows which one is original. :coolsmirk:
Posted by Bookworm  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  01:25 AM
Re. the 'two-fingered salute':

The "two-fingers salute" is certainly older than Agincourt. It appears in the Macclesfield Psalter MS 1-2005 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, believed to be produced in about 1330, Folio 130 Recto, CDROM p261, being made by a glove on the extended nose of a marginalia depicting a human headed hybrid beast, ridden by a person playing the pipe and tabor. The Psalter marginalia have many absurdities and obscenities so the traditional meaning of this gesture would not be out of place here. As the gesture is made by a disembodied glove accidental positioning of the hand may be ruled out.
Posted by outeast  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  05:17 AM
Oh, and Accipiter's analysis looks pretty good to me. Sad that 'Bookworm' just ignored it eh.
Posted by outeast  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  05:21 AM
why do the top picture looks darker then the bottom, the bottom pic looks faded, must be photoshopped. if they had common scense they would have fixed piper's face when fixing her fake finger.
Posted by chris  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  02:01 PM
I took both pictures to my Paint Shop Pro 7 and, altho I am not an expert, by any name, it appears that the two finger picture is the one that has been modified. The pixels appear to be splotchy and not as precise as the other. That's just me, though. If that IS true, then why, if it's such a tiny thing, did it get airbrushed in the first place? 🙄
Posted by MsTakenAgain  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  02:48 PM
:long:

The two fingered one is fake! Sweet Jebus, let it go!
Posted by Dily  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  05:58 PM
". . . it appears that the two finger picture is the one that has been modified. The pixels appear to be splotchy and not as precise as the other." -- Posted by MsTakenAgain



Ummmm. . .yeaaaaah. . .

Looking at those two close-ups, though, I just noticed more sign that the one-fingered picture was tampered with. Both pictures have a sort of halo of lighter pixels around the fingers where they are superimposed over the dark fabric background. On the one-finger picture, though, the halo around the finger abruptly stops. . .right where the second finger would be starting if it were there. The rest of the finger beyond that point lacks the halo, having only the dark fabric.



It's hard to tell what with the quality of the one-finger image being so much poorer, but it sort of looks as though some of the halo from the missing second finger was actually left in the picture. Especially towards the tip of the missing finger, and in the stretch between the two flowers. Where the actual finger was removed is a sort of strange blotchiness that doesn't match the rest of the dark fabric around that area.

Ah, hold on: I just put the pictures into my photo-editing software to see what would happen if I changed the contrast and the hues. And here is what I got:



In those pictures you can clearly see the halo I was talking about, as a sort of green colour (unless you're colourblind, in which case I have no idea what you can clearly see). You can see where some of the halo of the second finger was indeed left behind, near the tip of where the finger had been and between the two flowers. You can also see a sort of vague shape where the second finger had been, before it was cut out.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  06:30 PM
I'm sorry, typo. The ONE fingered one is fake. Jebus, get over it people! And Dily, proofread my post, dammit!
Posted by Dily  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  07:41 PM
Rethinking my computer analysis, I stand by the unalterable fact that the two-finger photo in this post is the most photo-shopped. However, that technically does not mean that the one-finger version was not altered. Just why the 2-finger version was more photo-shopped remains a mystery. Do we really need to know?
Posted by pazooter in WA  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  10:10 PM
Never mind all this tosh about Palin's sprog and what she does with her fingers . . . Why did someone cut bits off the lovely Miss Atherton?!?!
Posted by D F Stuckey  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  01:18 AM
If you look at larger version of this picture in the second picture her pointer is still down with an additional pointer giving the piece sign, therefore she has six fingers on that hand
Posted by RONNIE  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  11:17 AM
"If you look at larger version of this picture in the second picture her pointer is still down with an additional pointer giving the piece sign, therefore she has six fingers on that hand"

That "extra finger" is the pink swirly center of the flower pattern. You can tell from where it is, the odd angle it would be at if it were a finger, and from it being a different shade of pink than is her hand.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  11:35 AM
she looks very evil for somebody giving the peace sign. it was the look on her face that did it for me. it looks like she is ready to kill the little boy
Posted by tupto  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  05:21 PM
Comments: Page 1 of 2 pages  1 2 > 
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.