re: #248 Throbert McGee

“Mapled” is the appropriate term here, in that the fishiness of the CPR technique was evident to amateurs with only most basic training in CPR — just as one didn’t need any advanced or specialized knowledge of typography to be suspicious of the Rather memo.

In both cases, the testimonies from experts in the appropriate fields have only served to (massively) confirm what sharp-eyed amateurs had already suspected to be the case: that the tummy-tickling being applied by the Palestinian “medic” was totally inconsistent with effective CPR practices. The tickling is, however, consistent with either of two hypotheses:

(1) The child and the medic were both actors, and the “medic” was naturally trying to avoid harming the child with more realistic compressions;

(2) The child was already quite dead, by whatever cause, and the “medic” was an actor who was squeamish about touching a dead body. (A real medic who was knowingly participating in a fraud would’ve had no reason to refrain from more realistic CPR — a corpse won’t be bothered by cracked ribs.)

And if public opinion against the video continues to grow, count on CNN to use the same defensive tactic as used by Rather and Maples — claiming that the fakery could not have been at all apparent to anyone but a team of experts, and that normal “due diligence” in vetting a news story before airing does not and cannot involve calling a team of experts as the routine practice.

Could I add one further possibility to your list?

(3) The child was already quite dead, and was a close relative of some Hamas-hole standing in the room, holding an AK-47, and the “doctor” was understandably squeamish about applying massive force to the kid’s corpse under the circumstances, if you get my drift.