Piper Palin gives one-finger salute

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.

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?

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.

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. 😉

Charybdis, you're older than you look.

Republican, obviously.
Respectable? On what planet?

No matter what gesture she's making there, Piper sure looks pissed.

"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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

"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?

Accipiter - How do you that the old woman in the picture isn't just a senile old lady who smiles at everything.

"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?

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.

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.

"home schooled" I thought you knew.

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>.

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.

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.

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/

"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?

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.

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:

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.

Oh, and Accipiter's analysis looks pretty good to me. Sad that 'Bookworm' just ignored it eh.

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.

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? 🙄

:long:

The two fingered one is fake! Sweet Jebus, let it go!

". . . 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.

I'm sorry, typo. The ONE fingered one is fake. Jebus, get over it people! And Dily, proofread my post, dammit!

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?

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?!?!

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

"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.

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

Accipter you are not comparing the same flowers. The ones on the first set of pictures are near the edge of the coat, the ones in the subsequent ones near the middle.

You can tell by the seam, which does not appear in your first set of pictures.

Furthermore, a close examination reveals that not all flowers have two gray petals on them, some have none. From the first picture, it' s impossible to tell exactly where that two-petalled flower appears on the pattern.

I think the first picture is the real picture. The second appears to be the fake.

"Accipter you are not comparing the same flowers." -- Posted by Sadie Baker

Yes I am.

<a >Coat 1</a>

<a >Coat 2</a>

It is the same flower.
The one-finger picture is missing part of the background.
The one-finger picture is of lesser quality.
The one-finger picture still shows the outline of where the second finger used to be.
The one-finger picture is faked.

from urbanlegends.about.com = "the official photograph contains readable EXIF data (absent in the one-finger version) listing the date the image was snapped along with camera make, model, and settings, but shows no record of subsequent editing in Photoshop or any other software program."

get a grip, people!

I think everyone is missing the point, what is Palin putting in her pocket??

I say secret documents from Russia...

Aaaugh! I'm famous! :ahhh:

Anyway, from <a >that website</a>:

"In addition, the official photograph contains readable EXIF data (absent in the one-finger version) listing the date the image was snapped along with camera make, model, and settings, but shows no record of subsequent editing in Photoshop or any other software program."

I can't figure out any way to view that data on my own computer. I can tell just from the name of the photo that it is taken on a Fuji digital camera, and that the picture with Piper making faces and gestures is apparently taken six pictures after the other one on the government website. Other than that, the only data I get is file and picture size.

Can anybody verify what the Urban Legends site says? And perhaps provide something like a screen capture of it?

You can get an Exif Reader here for free 40 day evaluation: http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlexifreader.html

Pulling the double finger photo from the Alaska Gov't website, you find:

Filename : dscf1254.jpg
JFIF_APP1 : Exif
Main Information
Make : FUJIFILM
Model : FinePix S5200

Pulling the single finger photo from this website, you find several entries prior to the above data:

Filename : piperpalin.jpg
JFIF_APP1 : Exif
JFIF_APP1 : http
JFIF_APP14 : Photoshop 3.0
AdobeResource
IPTC-NAA : 24Byte
IPTC
Character-code definition : 1B2547
Record version : 0002
Copyright Info :
Main Information
Make : FUJIFILM
Model : FinePix S5200

I should think "Photoshop 3.0" is a dead give-away; but let's not let facts infringe on our deeply held paranoia, shall we?!?

Photoshopped totally. Anyone who does 1 minute of searching on google can find the originally. so cheap.

Sorry folks.. Piper was flipping the bird.. Six year olds facial expressions don`t lie..If it was a peace sign.. or she was telling the young lad something which would be a descriptive of the number ``2`` , her facial expression would not be one of disgust.and.. The same person who so brilliantly tried to show us ``in this article ,how easy it is to doctor a photo..``a.k.a. moron.. just show us how to doctor a photo...piper gigged this young man.. .The picture says it.The woman on the right is smiling.. like we all to in public to diguise the bad behavior of our kids when we are not in a position to correct them.And the woman on the left is showing that she is un-amused by Piper`s bad habits.. This is Sarah Palin`s daughter .Should we not expect this..

Exacly my point, Nathan. You have disregarded the facts for your own preconceived agenda. Awesome, man! Your open-mindedness is far too shallow! I hope your choice of a candidate will be all you imagine he might be. You do have a very active imagination! I believe they have medication for it, though... Maybe socialized medicine would do the trick, huh?