McCain showed up to the OLD MISS debate wearing Dubya’s crazy strobe necktie! Diagonal stripes of particular inconvenient width create signal noise on the interlaced television picture producing mesmerizing patterns of juxtaposed RGB. What might have passed for a Technicolor wardrobe malfunction in earlier days is a deliberate fashion faux-pas today.
In the false, phony, Franglais, trompe d’oeil sense of that f-word.

I doubt it’s beyond anyone’s French to call the mischievous upstaging device a trompe tête.

President Bush has worn that tie when Karl Rove might have judged it more prudent to hypnotize the TV audience sooner than let them focus on what Bush wasn’t saying.

But I’m trying to reconcile what I noticed AFTER the debate. I’m curious about why subsequent replay footage of last night’s debate depicts the errant accessory without the noisy interference. If digital equipment can filter the dissonance, why was it not cleaning up the necktie during the live signal?

Was the flashing tie meant to interrupt the audience’s flow of thought during the debate, but not the viewers’ reception of the pundits’ already vetted after-spin? Would there be a reason to mess with one signal, but make sure another was completely clear?

And if the noisy element is manipulable, might it have been actually carefully crafted? Noise, but shaped noise, with not the chaotic effect of an IED, but a directed disruption like that achieved with a shaped charge.

And not a subliminal message in Morse Code I should think, but visual counterpoint to the audio. In the form of an optic buzzer, pressed if what’s being communicated by the speakers threatens to have an effect that contradicts the programmed message?