I swore I was not going to talk about this, but it is getting funnier by the minute. Apparently a bunch of people posted a photo-shopped picture of Michelle Malkin’s head in a bikini, and she is still furious (almost as mad as she might get if a cemetary design was crescent shaped, or some other grave capitulation to the terrorists that would be taken as a sign that we are losing the war on terror):
I have had a nice afternoon with my family. I was not going to post on the lying hate-mongers again, but they will not stop. If they think I am going to shut up about their continued deranged smear job, think again.
Ken Layne (who, FWIW, has achieved legendary status here at Balloon Juice and is still one of my favorite bloggers ever) is continuing to fan the flames:
Our boss is IM’ing us with stuff like, “Why is Malkin bothering me?” and “Please make it stop!” But if he thinks a couple of lowly bloggers can stop a force of jingoistic bullshit like Michelle Malkin, he is sadly mistaken.
The story so far: Malkin is apparently claiming the all-but-naked picture of her is somehow “photoshopped,” whatever that means. Sure it is, Michelle, sure it is. We happened to find that picture on Flickr, which clearly identifies itself as “The best place to store, search, sort and share your photos.” Nothing at all about “photoshops.” Nice try, Soviets!
Michelle is now threatening to sue, although for what, I am not sure. I am not sure how attaching someone’s head to an attractive looking female in a bikini is a crime, although, to be honest, I didn’t know it was a photoshop job either (I guess I just wasn’t looking closely enough at her neck). My actual first reaction was “Wow. She looks pretty good in a bikini, ” so I guess I fail to see how this was a grievous assault on one’s dignity. I guess bikini shots aren’t very popular with the Amish community Red State America (save Mark Foley’s district), so maybe this is a cobblestone street cred issue. In my defense, I am not very good at spotting child predators, either, so when it comes to photoshop jobs and child molesters, this is not a very useful website.
At any rate, I will try to keep you all posted as this story undressesunfolds.
I would like to add that if a picture of me from 1993 being kissed by a drag queen dressed up as Marilyn Monroe in a gay bar in Morgantown ever turns up, it is real. And I was shit-canned drunk and I think I went home with a young college girl that night (I hope it was the one who dragged me there).
Have a good night. I am heading out for martinis.
*** Update ***
It is official.
Thre martinis (vodka, dry, up, extra olive), one shot of Tuaca, two four-finger servings of Laphroiag (one on the rocks, one neat), and this story is still funny. Funnier, actually.
*** Update ***
The humor potential for this ‘smear’ to go one for a while is unlimited, and I have to say I am digging it.
Mike in SLO
Who cares about Malkin? We want to hear about your night in Morgantown!
Richard 23
John, which one of these is real?
Pb
Uh-oh.
And given that track record…
I hope it was a girl. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Funny stories, btw, thanks, John–the other reason we like you is because you actually *do* have a sense of humor. :)
ThymeZone
Okay, the ‘shopped photo appears to have a half-scale head on a full scale body. As if poor Michelle had been set upon by headhunters who managed to shrink her head without killing her.
It’s grotesque, and funny. Why in the world would she be upset about it? Just an ordinary Intertrons prank.
Pb
Are you honestly asking why in the world Michelle Malkin would be upset about something? That’s like asking why in the world would dogs chase cats, or snakes eat mice, or Ann Coulter make false accusations of treason.
ThymeZone
I find that a little hard to believe. That tiny head on that body?
Vladi G
John, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Ken knows/knew it’s photoshopped. The quoted text below is grade A snark:
He’s just poking the beehive to see the inhabitants go crazy. It’s working, and it’s hilarious.
srv
Actually, that’s what Hitler looked like in a bikini.
ThymeZone
Good point, what I actually meant was “why would any reasonable person be upset” about this.
For example, if they had put my head on that body, I’d laugh. And I’m not sure that mine wouldn’t look more realistic than the ‘shopped butchered photo at Wonkette. It’s a really bad job AFAIC.
John Cole
I know damn well Ken Layne knows it is fake. He is just pulling her chain.
Keith
While they were at it, they should have also drawn some wavy lines from ass to nose to explain that perpetually-curled upper lip.
tzs
John, we definitely want to hear the entire story about you and the drag queen…
And Malkin? Eh, if she weren’t being a raging harpy about this, it would be something else she’d be effervessing in alt about. Could Someone Up There please aim a meteorite at her and give her something real to whine about?
ThymeZone
Awful. But damned funny.
DougJ
Funny stuff. I’ll have to start reading Kevin Layne.
Richard 23
The original photo has been found.
Steve
This is pretty hilarious. For an added level of insanity, check out the claim by noted legal scholar Ace of Spades that Malkin has a slam-dunk lawsuit for defamation (uh, no).
I particularly enjoyed the attempt by commentors to engage in a “kerning” analysis in the never-ending struggle for the Right to relive its Greatest Moment Evar.
Right. It’s not that the head doesn’t match the neck or body, or anything like that. It’s the highly-suspicious date stamp technology! That proves everything!
Same commentor later, in response to a doubter…
Just amazing, the thought process of these people. Simply amazing.
Andrew
I’m a little drowsy from some cold meds, but somehow I ended up finding this gem. Genius.
MN Politics Guru
My respect for you just quintupled. :)
ThymeZone
At least the head looks normal-sized on that one.
And, the guy has got a pair of legs.
Par R
Steve comments:
Agree that clearly she has no basis for a successful lawsuit. My understanding, however, is that she has a very rich supporter who’s willing to foot the tab for an expensive lawsuit to seek a form of retribution. And if I understand her lengthy posts on this subject, I don’t think she’s particularly upset about the photo itself (in fact, she comments that she wished she looked that good in a bikini); I gather her upset flows from the extremely nasty accompanying comments.
jg
OT.
As of today I anm copletely wisdom tooth free. They left one in last year thinking it would never bother anybody. Well they were wrong. I need jaw surgery and so its in the way. I gotta tell ya. There’s nothing like finally getting up the nerve to visit an orthodontist to have your teeth straightened while you’re in your mid thirties only to have them say ‘braces!!, thats a start but actually your whole lower jaw grew in wrong, we’ll need to rebuild your jaw’. Fuckers!. I better look real good when this is done.
BTW Anyone see Mr Conservative on HBO? Its about Goldwater. It really made me miss the real republican party.
Krista
It does look real upon first glance, though. The way the body’s arched back, the head could just look small due to it appearing to be farther away from the camera than the torso is.
Either way, I don’t know why she’s so bent out of shape. It’s not like they posted her head onto Michael Moore’s body. (Actually, can we do that? That’d be funny as hell.)
Oh, and can we post Don Surber’s head onto that bikini body? That’d make my weekend…
ThymeZone
Uh, no. The neck is vertical. On top of it is this TINY LITTLE HEAD. Which is tilted, miraculously, without a corresponding bend in the neck. Good grief, are you all blind?
chopper
obviously, malkin is pissed b/c this sort of thing damages her reputation as a serious journalis…sorry, i couldn’t finish that without laughing.
god, what a non-story.
SeesThroughIt
Awww, man! You just barely beat me to it!
At any rate, this whole to-do is pretty fucking funny. Not as funny as that picture Andrew linked to, but still funny.
Richard 23
Krista, you’re a kinky one. Kinky Krista.
carpeicthus
As ThymeZone points out, this photo is clearly far askew from reality. As Steve points out, so are Malkin’s fans.
Rudi
Could the source of the picture be Reuters. I looked close and the flares…
Jane Finch
Michelle lives for feeling victimized by the (liberal) internet…she’s feasted on stories for weeks that wouldn’t last an hour in a flaming Yahoo chatroom.
And I love Ken Layne…go Ken!
Jane Finch
PS Next time, try Oban…nectar of the gods.
tzs
John, glad to find another Laphroiag-lover. (And yes, Oban is good too!)
…also, if anyone ever gets his hands on it, there’s a sake called Kubota which is deceptively smooth and simple and easy to drink. Nectar of the gods. It’s only when you try to get up from the chair you realize suddenly how much you’ve had.
Jon
1) The only way this could be funnier is if there were some way to set it to “Yakkety Sax” (aka the Benny Hill theme).
2) Laphroaig? I did not expect to find such taste and distinction in a mere blog.
Rocks, please, and just a dab of branch water…
CaseyL
Seems to me the harpie’s gonna file suit for no reason other than to make a couple bloggers’ lives hellish.
Even if the suit gets tossed, they still have to hire attorneys and respond to the initial complaint.
It doesn’t help that she’s got some wingnut sugar daddy ready to fund a frivolous/harrassment lawsuit.
Now, what’d be peachy is if Layne could file a countersuit against Malkin. He’d have, I think, better grounds for claiming harrassment.
Keith
BLOGGERS UNHINGED!!!!
Krista
I said “upon first glance,” Cranky McStressedpants.
Krista
No, I just have a really inappropriate sense of humour. C’mon, you can’t tell me the idea of Don Surber’s head on some bikini chick’s body doesn’t make your synapses stutter in a most delightful way.
VidaLoca
Because she takes herself a little too seriously? On the other hand when you’ve elected yourself diva-in-chief of the effort to save the country (or at least the right-wing blogosphere) from teh isloamomexifascist appeaser peaceniks, how can you have any time for humor?
VidaLoca
Not Surber. Goldstein.
Matt
I dunno, it is a pretty cheap shot. And attempting to discredit her via an attack on her appearance, even in such a roundabout, proxied manner, strikes me as maybe a little sexist.
On the other hand, Michelle Malkin is a total douche so I’m not sure I really care.
tBone
Stutter? Yes. Delightful? No.
Krista
No! BAD VidaLoca! (Smack’s VidaLoca’s nose with rolled-up newspaper).
DougJ
I don’t get why she cares. It’s not even that racy of a photo. And would anyone care if she flirted with the camera once when she was 19?
ThymeZone
She’s a raving lunatic.
VidaLoca
It is a little odd; here she’s the spokesperson for the leading edge of a political movement that came out of self-destruction in 1964 to elect 3 of the last 4 Presidents and control both houses of Congress (except for a brief period) since 1994. They’ve put their people into a large fraction of the judgeships in the lower federal courts and are close to controlling the Supreme Court. They have a media outlet that acts as a government news agency, and they’ve been successful at co-opting the other media outlets that they don’t control.
Yet they seem to believe that they live in a bunker, continually attacked by all sides. They whinge, they bleat, they threaten to sue.
To some extent it’s true: though they control most of the important levers of power, beyond the perimeters of their most loyal followers they’ve lost the culture wars. And the key battle they’ve lost is the battle over sex and sexuality: Malkin can’t own being a nineteen-year-old and flirting with the camera because it would mean endorsing freedom when what she really wants to endorse is repression.
Once again, the personal is political.
VidaLoca
Owwwie! No fair! You’re not supposed to smack me, John is!
jg
They’re just keeping the illusion alive.
Richard 23
How does it discredit her? It discredits me for giving a damn.
Steve
Malkin’s outrage just continues to boil over and her utter seriousness is an endless source of amusement.
The funniest part is, someone has clearly advised her that the legal standard for defamation requires proof of malice (a very difficult standard to meet) and so every other sentence out of her mouth is like, “look at this, EVEN MORE MALICE!” as if she’s just coincidentally choosing to use that word or something.
Ned R.
My friends, all this wasn’t even her ‘best’ post of the day. Instead, it was this vent re: Mark Foley, specifically this bit:
It happens to both boys and girls, and all parents must be vigilant and immunize their children against predators early and often.
The implication being one can vaccinate for predators. Gotta love modern medicine!
jg
Steve I just wish the rights linguistic transparencies were noticed by more than just the left and those who don’t want to lock up the left.
fwiffo
As far as Photoshop jobs go, I’d give it a 7. The weird thing is that its giveaways aren’t the usual for a mediocre Photoshop job. Usually, the head is a little too big (easier to conceal the original head), not too small. They matched the lighting/contrast pretty well, usually that’s the dead giveaway (it’s either harsher or flatter or from the wrong direction or the wrong type of light.) They did a good job of blending in the hair with the background in a natural looking way. The complexion/skintone is a little wrong, but not bad. They did a very good job matching the grain/noise, and the resolution (in the fuzzyness sense). Very often, the grain or resolution will match poorly.
On the other hand, the position and size of the head is really pretty bad. And the date was obviously added digitally, which was silly because I don’t see the need to date the picture.
Richard 23
Well, if nobody else will date you….
Hey, I’ll be here all week. Be sure to try the buffet!
Pb
Maybe, but when? It could have already been in the photo when they found it.
rachel
I feel sorry for the girl in the original picture. What did she ever do to deserve that woman’s head pasted onto her body? She should sue for defamation.
ThymeZone
It’s a figure of speech.
The Other Steve
I just did a google search, and apparently using photoshop to doctor images is a common tactic of Michelle Malkin. Like this one.
So I don’t understand why she is whining so much about this one.
ceb
A little context:
The photo was originally posted by Malkin stalker Eric Muller on his blog Is That Legal? as real. It was then picked up by Gawker & Wonkette. Malkin then posted that it was fake. To his credit, Muller admitted his mistake and posted a correction. Layne then (in my view) pretended he knew all along it was fake.
P.S. All of Malkin’s photoshops are clearly identified as such
P.P.S. I’m not a huge Malkin fan, but the amount of racist and sexist abuse she receives from liberals is astonishing.
The Other Steve
I thought this was funny yesterday. :-)
From the link at flickr, came this malkin fan
In a post about blaming Clinton for 9/11 he writes:
to which I responded…
“You are absolutely right, terrorists need no rationale for their actions, so it absolutely makes sense that you would need no rationale for your blaming Clinton. “
TexasRainmaker
“
to which I responded:
Moron.
Steve
I’m pretty confident, if there actually were a lawsuit filed, it would be incredibly obvious to the judge as well. I’d have a field day demonstrating what an absurd manufactured lawsuit it was.
Malkin’s lawsuit would be about as productive as the time Fox sued Al Franken for using ‘fair and balanced’ in the title of his book.
caroline
What a nut! If someone made my body look that great in a swimsuit I would be celebrating and sending it to everyone I knew! LOL!
This is what whacked out puritanical fundamentalism does to one I guess. Looking good in a swimsuit is now a BAD thing!
TexasRainmaker
Caroline,
I think you and the others miss the point of Malkin’s complaint. It’s not so much that someone photoshopped the picture, but that they’re using that fake photo as a basis to call her “slut” and “hypocrite”. It’s the pathological desire to attack someone personally, even when using a completely fake basis, that has come to define the Left that she is pointing out.
If you look at the very first post that started this whole story, it was a leftwing blog calling Malkin a hypocrite and slut for the picture – which was fake. If there were actual proof of Malkin’ hypocrisy, perhaps she’d deserve some ridicule for her position. But this story is entirely fabricated by her leftwing opponents and she’s just pointing out how typical their actions are.
fishbane
Ace’s legal advice is funny, but not as funny as his commenters’. That comment thread is a one-stop shop for common misunderstandings of civil law, although I’m still waiting for someone to say that loser-pays is the rule.
J. King
I hate that spiteful bitch worse than snakes, but it’s not like she’s wearing a thong. The big scandal is what comes out of her mouth, not what she wears on her body.
SeesThroughIt
What, you were never vaccinated? What kind of jerkwater burg did you grow up in? I was given my vaccination pill by my daytime nanny, who hid it in a lump of brie, which, of course, is the traditional snack to be served to you as you ride in your personal limo (no using your parents’ limo…like a damn savage!). I mean, this is America, dammit!
DonkeyKong
R. M. Scaife sends Malkin a roll of quarters every time she uses “deranged”, “unhinged”, or “smearjob” on her site or in her columns. Such is the life of a C-list wingnut welfare queen.
capelza
Well, this gives a whole new meaning to “West Virginia mountain momma”…:p
Malkin is upset about THIS? I wonder what she’d do if someone photoshopped her face into a hejab…
The bikini is as American as apple pie, good grief girl. So is a sense of homour.
capelza
That last word should be humor…two things I need to do, learn how to spell American and to learn how to see my typos before I send posts here…
Punchy
Wow. I, too, shudder to think what kind of crizzap involving me, alcohol, girls, and dance floors would be on the ‘net if everyone had digital cameras back when I was in college.
As for this:
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in days….
Skip
Meanwhile we have this:
“Agence France Presse:Pig’s head dumped outside mosque at start of Ramadan.”
This suggests my other favorite neocon, Charles Krauthammer, is also keeping busy.
Skip
” It’s the pathological desire to attack someone personally, even when using a completely fake basis, that has come to define the Left”‘
Eureka and Amen! You’d’ never catch Ann “Thumper Rabbitt” Coulter attack somone personally, or Rush “First Dog” Limbaugh. That would defy all credulity, as ludicrous as if Chistopher Hitchens were suddenly to malign, say, Mother Theresa.
Bruce Moomaw
Can we talk, Tex? The summary of the NIE which Bush released (God knows how much it’s gussied up to make him look better) says flatly that Bush’s involvement in Iraq — as he’s currently running it — is INCREASING the probability of future terrorist attacks on the US rather than DECREASING it (which, you’ll recall, was the purpose of the invasion). And it does refer specifically to that involvement “increasing attacks” on the US — not just to increasing the number of would-be terrorists (although it certainly mentions that as well).
It does make the not-exactly surprising point that if we were to succeed after all in Iraq — that is, succeed in making it a peaceful, stable and mostly-democratic society — this would indeed discourage jihadism. No kidding. Got any ideas as to how to do it?
And it says repeatedly that actually working to bust up al-Qaeda itself — which, of course, is what Clinton was engaging in when we sent Rahman to jail — DOES have a positive effect in reducing jihadism. (Although I myself remain convinced that we should be intensely concentrating instead on reducing nuclear proliferation — and thus the danger of nuclear terrorism — in nations which, unlike Iraq, actually present a threat in that regard.) Whatever the summary’s other qualities may be, it’s at least nice and short — three pages — and written in about as complex a style as Dr. Seuss. Try reading it sometime.
Steve
Whereas the Right has the pathological desire to malign the entire Left, which of course is far superior behavior. Seriously, you must have slept through the entire 90s if you think the Left has some kind of premium on personal attacks.
Malkin’s entire schtick is, “look, everyone, some lefty sent me this horrible email!” and everyone here knows it, which is why we are laughing so hard at the current “controversy.” Oh no, poor Michelle, she just HATES it when the lefties are mean to her, never mind that she’d have no career if they stopped!
tBone
Now that is some truly stunning projection, my friend. If you have an HDMI port in the back of your head, you’d make a great addition to my home theater system.
Richard 23
Uh oh, Sadly No went and did it again.
Paul L.
Original photo for Michelle bikini photoshop located
I await the retraction from Wonkette now.