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I don’t see an earpiece

5 October 2004, 00:26

I think that Duh-by has been fitted with a sub-dermal transmitter.
I’ve been hesitant about saying that out loud since my co-irker
laughed in my face the first time that I said it, but his debate
performance the other night emphasized the possibility to me. This is
why I say so.

I worked in live theatre as a techie for five years, two of them
professionally at Equity Union shops and another at one of the best
non-profit theatres in the Midwest. I’ve observed people speaking for
hundreds, if not thousands, of hours. I know when someone is reading
a script, when they’re doing rote recitation from memory, when they’re
improvising, and when they’re being prompted.

Remember Duhbya’s Convention speech? The unfocused, faraway look in
his eyes, the irregular pauses, emphasis on inappropriate parts of
sentences. He was being prompted. He wasn’t reading off a
teleprompter, in fact I didn’t see any teleprompters on his famous "in
the round" stage. Unfortunately by the time I noticed this they
weren’t doing any more shots of the stage from far out, just
close-ups. I also didn’t see any earphones, even on his close-ups,
and I was looking for them. (Incidentally, that wasn’t ’in the round’,
which would have needed audience on all four sides. It was a ’thrust’
stage, but you can’t say "thrust" around conservatives, or they get
dirty ideas.)

This was where Roland looked at me funny and said, "Of course there
were teleprompters." Then he laughed and called me a ’conspiracy
theorist’.

Now remember his performance Thursday. Again the stilted, unnatural
cadence, odd pauses as his mind tried to catch up with what his ears
were feeding him. And no transmitter in his ear that I could see.