Eyes 1, Brain 0

Given the available cues, if you were to scroll down to the comments and join the conversation with your fellow Daily Caller readers, who would you say she voted for?

Despite being dead since 2008, the mummified body of a 49-year old Detroit woman was recorded voting in the 2010 Michigan gubernatorial election. 

Well, that takes some of the fun out of things. If it was 2010, it can't have been the Kenyan. Here are a couple other things that might change the equation:

1) She's not a "Detroit woman," and the body wasn't "in Detroit." She lived in Pontiac (citing election records from Oakland County -- Pontiac's the county seat -- might have been a tipoff). Clue-wise, that's sort of like getting Gastonia mixed up with Charlotte.
2) The mummy in the picture? It's from Indonesia.*

When in doubt, kids, bet the mean. If she voted in Oakland, your safest guess** is that she voted for the Republican (Snyder won about 60% in Oakland in 2010). For some reason, that's not what the Daily Caller wanted you to think. Shall we see what the commenters say?

I see those Obama yard signs in the cemetery all the time.

I bet ACORN could tell us with little effort. . . .

I hear water boarding works well on terrorist that try to subject the constitution and elections too. It's time we start using it against the progressives on a regular basis.

Did she show a voter ID when she cast her ballot?

No. That would be racist.

Obama says not one smidgin of corruption...don't ya know?

It's Detroit - the real and true ugly face of the urban jungle, where life is cheap and getting cheaper. Get used to it; coming soon to a city near you.

We all heard Holder, Picture ID is to suppress the Fraud Turn out

Voting is the most precious right we have as Americans, and yet no one will go to jail for this. Voter fraud should be a life sentence just like treason. Stop the fraud with mandatory picture IDs.

Probably happened in one of those districts where THE FOREIGNER got 100% of the votes. Kim Un would be proud.

She looks just like any other Obama zombie voter.

Given that they have only five grafs to work with, our little friends at the Daily Caller demonstrate a pretty hefty amount of basic cluelessness. For one, the identity of the body hasn't been established (yeah, it's a technical point, but copy editors live on technical points). Two, will you please learn how to hyphenate preposed number compounds? Three, the remains are not "believed to be at least six years old"; if she got a traffic ticket in October 2008, they couldn't have been older than five-and-change in early March 2014. Four, officials didn't tell the Freep that the alleged 2010 vote "was most likely a clerical error"; in the Freep story, officials "point out that could have been*** an administrative error." Five, the clerk didn't say that "someone with an infrequent record like hers usually only vote**** in presidential elections"; what the clerk told the Freep (which happens to be true) is that occasional voters are more likely to vote in presidential elections than other elections.

None of which, of course, should come as a shock; if you don't think the Daily Caller is run by drooling hacks and liars, you probably don't read the Daily Caller. But think back for a moment about what the Daily Caller wanted you to think about this story. With respect to the nice fellow who commented on a post here last week, it's actually pretty simple -- you can be all about the scary black dude in the White House without ever saying "race."

Yes, we'll be talking about some of this stuff -- affective outcomes of visual framing decisions, at least, not the moral dishonesty***** of particular media outlets -- in Las Vegas next week. Stop by if you're interested.


* This is from the caption you get if you click on the little chevron in the lower right corner: "A man removes a mummy from a coffin before giving it new clothes in a ritual in the Toraja district of Indonesia's South Sulawesi Province, August 23, 2012."
** You can draw your own conclusions from her having worked for Chrysler Financial.
*** Yes, [sic]. The Freep essentially no longer does copy editing, but at least it doesn't lie about other people's reporting.
**** Little bit of a [sic] here too.
***** Business before pleasure!