Pat Dollard

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The Swamp:
by John Riley of Newsday

So, the Web sensation of the day is this picture from the White House Web-site of Dick Cheney, wearing sunglasses and flyfishing.

The reason: Some think they see a naked woman reflected in the shades.

We don’t see it. But if you put “Cheney” and “sunglasses” into Google, you’ll find lots of speculation.

And there’s a story about the phenomenon below, which says the image — enlarged — is actually that of a hand casting a rod.

Is that really a naked woman reflected in Cheney’s sunglasses?

By Kevin G. Hall and George Bridges
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — He shot his hunting partner, but Vice President DickCheney apparently doesn’t fly fish with naked women.

Since Wednesday, the blogosphere has been atwitter over aphotograph on the White House Web site of Cheney with a caption thatsaid he was fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.

The photo is a tight shot of Cheney’s face sporting dark sunglasses and his trademark grin. What’s stirring all the buzz is the reflection in the vice president’s dark glasses.

Some thought that the reflection looked like a naked woman and, this being Cheney and this being the Internet Age,they immediately shared that thought with the world.

In a Google search for the words “Dick Cheney” and “sunglasses,” 79,300 hits came back at midafternoon today.

On DemocraticUnderground.com, the discussion starts with this question: “Notice anything … interesting … reflected in his sunglasses? Something that has little to do with conventional
‘fly-fishing’?”

It wasn’t just the blogosphere. On a Web site called sportsshooter.com, dedicated to sports photography, professionals also did a double take and debated the shot on their message board.

“Naked woman??????? That explains his heart problems!!!” noted photographer Jason Frizzelle of Greenville, N.C.

AOL’s Political Machine online column gave readers a chance to vote on what was reflected in the vice-presidential shades. The four choices were:

—Hot babe sunbathing.

—Alien overlord.

—That’s not Dick Cheney.

—The image was Photoshopped.

The vice president’s office saw little humor in the buzz.

“Clearly the picture shows a hand casting a rod,” grumbled spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell.

As journalists, however, the word of an official spokeswoman isn’tgood enough.

So McClatchy/Tribune Information Services photo editor George Bridges used the latest digital technology to enlarge the picture, took a close look at Cheney’s sunglasses and concluded that Mitchell was telling the truth.

The image is of the vice president’s hand on his fly rod.

“In one lens of his sunglasses you can clearly tell it is a sleeved arm of Cheney or a fishing companion,” Bridges said. “The other lens has an extreme distortion that, without looking at it closely, could be misconstrued.”