Think Twice Before You Believe the Story Behind the Image
How many people have seen this photo? Go ahead—raise your hand.
Most of us recognize it immediately. Over time, it’s been widely circulated online and turned into a meme—often labeled as the image of a “crazed liberal woman.” That narrative spread quickly, and for many, it became accepted as fact.
That’s also how it was used by Ken LaCorte on his YouTube channel Elephants in the Room . If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he previously served as vice president and senior executive producer of FoxNews.com from 2006 to 2016.
Before jumping to conclusions, though, it’s important to take a step back—because this story is really about how easily we form opinions based on incomplete information.
I’ll be upfront: I watch Elephants in the Room . While I don’t always agree with Ken’s perspectives, I do believe he makes a genuine effort to approach complex topics with balance and thoughtful analysis.
In this case, however, he used the now-infamous image in a way that aligned with the widely accepted—but misleading—narrative.
Then something unusual happened.
After learning the true context behind the photo, Ken publicly acknowledged the mistake. He didn’t ignore it or double down. Instead, he used his platform to correct the record.
That kind of accountability is rare—and it deserves recognition.
It also raises an important question: how many others who shared or used this image would be willing to do the same?
This photo circulated across the internet countless times, almost always framed in the same misleading way. And like many viral images, repetition gave it credibility. What started as a misrepresentation became, in the minds of many, “the truth.”
That’s the real issue.
We live in an era where images and videos spread faster than facts. Even before the rise of artificial intelligence, the media could be taken out of context and used to tell a false story. Today, with AI making manipulation even easier, the challenge of separating truth from fiction has only grown.
The lesson here is simple—but critical:
Be cautious about what you accept at face value.
If something feels too perfectly aligned with your existing beliefs—whether political or otherwise—it’s worth taking a moment to dig deeper. Look for context. Verify the source. Question the narrative.
Because being informed isn’t about never being wrong—it’s about being willing to correct course when you are.
And in that regard, more people could take a page from Ken’s response.
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I'm hoping that this inspires some introspection and also context for the discussions we have here. That is why I have included all the video context, so as to be cleaned of my own biases.
Good luck with that. The more I learn about human behavior the more I understand that the ability to introspect is limited. The majority of people seek validation for their feelings and are susceptible to joining cults - the ones with charisma can start cults. With the inception and use of AI, people can easily find a buddy to praise their every thought and feeling.
I watch so many videos that I find somewhat informative, but highly redundant on the reasons/excuses used to explain and/or justify anti-social/manipulative/destructive behavior that I won't waste time sharing unless I think the info is actually providing food for thought for the people who are interested in better understanding the spectrum of human behavior and how to self-protect in addition to self-reflect.
I recently had an interesting interaction with a childhood friend who has probably burned most of her bridges because she has always been a self-serving, manipulation person that I loved and defended because I usually gave her the benefit of the doubt because she was (and is) adept at playing the victim card. Now that I see who she is, I am hoping that I never hear from her ever again. The outrageous lies she told me about her family showed a level of desperation that makes me wonder just what in the Hell she done that she thinks I would be stupid enough to back her when I haven't seen or heard from her in years. Not my circus and not my monkeys.
Perrie, you might enjoy the info in the following video.
This is Richard Grannon commenting on Dr. Peter Salernos Claims about Narcissism - Narcissism is not a shame-based disorder.
Well, I, for one, have never seen that photo before (and I am unable to open the videos that have been posted), and based on the other faces in the photo I couldn't possibly guess what her facial expression denotes. But such recognition is not the reason why Perrie posted this article.
Sorry, Buzz, about you not being able to see this video. But you can get the idea from what I am talking about.
I have access on a type of Youtube site called bilibili that has a lot of what Youtube has, and it has a number of episodes of Ken LaCorte / Elephants in the rooms. I just watched one about the history of Israel., If you were to indicate the title of the episode you posted, I might be able to find it here.
When members post a Youtube and provide the title and artist/commentator's name I am often able to find it on bilibili, but if they don't, I am unable to know what it is they posted, and do not have the ability to seek it elsewhere.
Hi Buzz,
The title is there. "A correction, and an apology". I don't think you'll have it there since it's only about 2 min long.
Yes, it wouldn't be something picked up by bilibili if it's only a 2 minute posting, but is it posted on the end of a regular titled episode? If so the main episode title is what I need.
I understand Buzz, but it was literally the only thing he posted that week, and that was all
Okay, so be it.
A picture is worth 1,000 words has morphed into a picture is worth 10,000 lies.
Well, that's very true. I think that this is a cautionary tale.
There was an interesting piece on the "Hidden Brain" (I think) about how the brain's functionality is wired to keep us alive.
From Google AI:
And then there is this one on The Secret of Charisma , if interested.
I'm going to have to check out that show. Sounds very interesting.
I think it's very hard to convince people once they believe something. It's the "Mendela Effect" in action.
Ignorance debating against ignorance.
It's just like NewsTalkers!!
Who are you talking about when you say ignorance? Me?
[✘]
Obviously ME
The way I read the comment, Bob was trying to point out that we tend not to examine the underpinnings of our beliefs but rather act from them.
We deal with this all the time. It is not an innocent mistake, somebody 'clipped' her expression out of the video (it seems clear), and then 'executed' its way to virilization. They won't stop it. We contend with it as the way it is now.
I don't think that it started as an innocent mistake. Someone definitely took her out of context on purpose. But that doesn't stop other people from investigating the truth, does it?
Trump Supporters Shut Down Protesters
Hi dear Perrie! How are you 'darling'? Our talks and meetings are rare these busy days online.
The problem with this stuff is that it is intended for the 'hasty' reader and the lazy 'talkers' whom do not have the time or inclination to do research. In my case, generally, when I cannot ascertain a picture, subject matter, or it looks wild and exaggerated I just pass it up (without comment) and deal with other concerns surrounding other topics in an article. That is, I may still choose to opine - just not about the intended 'object'—whatever it may be.
And it gets steadily worse, as there are commenters, opiners, and 'creators' here and in the real world that are doing this: 1. Manipulating the low-information public with overwhelming (time-consuming) images, disinformation, and 'bad' informations. 2. Choose to continue the charade under cover of symbolism or 'art' capturing a theme. (It is not.)
One thing that this article does is 'a call to attention' of willing commenters on NT to try to find time (where/when possible) to research what each other is sharing. We have a great deal of this already happening, and yet. . . the 'field is white (ripe)' with this kind of misinformation and disinformation 'overload.'
BTW, this misleading 'icon' of this woman appears at 1:52 and 3:32 in the reposted video (she speaks and makes a normal discussion set of faces).
Okay, I attempted to share video comments from Youtube. . . and the 'internet' is not going for it. Oh well!
Just copy and paste the URL
No, not that. I was attempting to include a portion of the comment section from the posted video at 7. Honestly, I did not know our videos were similarly or exactly the same.
As I soon discovered at 7, the comments can not be viewed (the comments were 'washed away' with the hit of the "Reply" button and simply would go away. No problem.
I can see why they would be proprietary to Youtube. Now, I know. Maybe, if there is a next time to attempt such a thing, I could simply do a "screenshot" and post.
No problem. I understand what occurred.
Thank you!
CB, generally, if you take the comments section that you copied and paste it into notepad or Word or a similar program, and then copy it again, the text will show up.
Got to watch for those open and closed parentheses! Arrrgh! I have started dropping the ending parenthesis again!
Thank you, brother Thomas!
@TheHirohikoAraki
1 year ago “So you are telling me that woman wasn’t triggered at all?” ”Yes and I’m tired of pretending that it’s not .”
@willscomix
5 years ago Hope she's doing okay and that screen cap didn't ruin her life too much
@addisonsteiner6473
6 years ago Triggered girl wasn't really triggered at all.
@lowkey87685
4 years ago Damn you internet. You did her dirty.
Credit: Youtube.
thanks for posting those comments
Nothing will ever top the Covington video. Watching people deny the contents of an unedited video in order to justify their slandering of a teenager was really eye-opening. Set the table for the Biden videos.
So say those who have posted the above photo on NT numerous times...
Not that I ever expected any of them to actually own up to it, that would require a conscience and the ability to feel shame.
What are you talking about?
Progressives here were shown the unedited video that demonstrated beyond doubt their made up version of events was lie. Repeatedly. And despite being having the unedited video handed to them, they persisted in a lie.
This is a picture that was apparently taken out of context. It's not even in the same ball park.
Sean,
I knew you were going to say that. There was no "one" video of the event, but many. It looked one way from one angle and a totally different way from another. Kind of what happens when we see an arrest or a shooting.
This poor woman didn't have a wealthy family to take people to plead her case in the court of public opinion on her behalf for her misrepresentation, did she?
So no, everywhere she goes, that is the thought in someone's mind. It's not just the same lie.
The initial, edited clips that were pushed by the media and created the firestorm were designed to mislead people. It was one thing to be fooled by it, but after the full video made by the group that was harassing the Covington kids came to light hours later, that initial narrative was demonstrably fake and indefensible. That people persisted in the fake narrative despite being shown conclusive proof of how fake the original video was, was eye opening. The truth, no matter how clear, simply didn’t matter when it conflicted with their biases.
was this woman every put on national tv and accused of crimes she didn’t commit? I have no idea what her name was or what she supposedly did other than make an unpleasant face. The msm certainly didn’t spend days attacking her and trying to ruin her life…
What video is being referred to here? I tried to find something about "Covington video" and saw something about the incident in D.C. with a teenager and Native Americans protesting. . . .
Yes.
First of all, this kid was not accused of any crime. He was a rich kid who could afford a PR and a legal team.
And while you accuse the media of doing this to the kid, the same thing is true of this woman. Literally, till today, her face is all over the internet as some sort of crazed liberal feminist.
But none of this is the point. Not mine. Not Ken's.
It's the fact that, in both cases, people went for the easy, no-litmus test of these stories. That every picture tells a story, but not really. They are often misleading and filtered by what we already have in our heads.
Like the "Mendela Effect", like Jiffy peanut butter.
I was simply pointing out your attempt to deflect from the above issue. You come in apparently trying to justify the use of fake photos instead of simply saying "Yeah, our bad, we should all strive to do better".
I know I never said anything that was a 'lie' about the stupid Covington incident and I don't recall seeing anyone else here doing that either. Were those you believe to be "liberals" here on this site misrepresenting the Covington kid? Claiming he was something he was not? I do not recall that happening at all, so please do show where that happened. If you're just harping about some amorphous "left" you think did that kid wrong and are trying to make some equivalence to this seed, then sadly your attempt ended in tragic failure.
Are you sure you read the seed above? Because not only are you not "in the ballpark", I'm not even sure if you know the general topic being discussed.
Morning..yes we saw this in action with the Bondi shooting last year..
Photos began circulating almost immediately not to mention the pure lies..
Someone in Eastern Europe cropped the first photo and said the cop had surrendered and the other had frozen..
In actuality fact she had her arms up telling people to move back after the shooting.. someone quickly released the full photo and shut it down very fast..
Take everything with a grain of salt these days to be honest...
Excellent example.
A correction, and an apology
That kind of accountability is rare—and it deserves recognition.
Oh yes, very rare. A very good lesson indeed.
Let us not make a mistake in the process. Like Buzz, I have never seen that picture AND I would never reach a conclusion based on a picture or a meme. To say the picture is false is one thing. To say Ken LaCorte had no point is another. I know you are not saying that, but you are not addressing that part of it either.
"When it comes to college enrollment and graduation rates, women continue to surpass men by large margins. In fact, according to recent data summarized by The Chronicle of Higher Education, the gender gap in college graduation is larger in some states than some racial/ethic differences in graduation rates.
College Enrollment
Nationwide, women comprised 58% of all college students in 2020, up from 56.6% six years earlier. Women have outnumbered men among college students for decades, but the gap continues to widen. In 1979, about 200,000 more women were enrolled in college than men. By 2021, that difference had grown to about 3.1 million more women than men in college.
Using data from the U.S. Department of Education for fall 2020 college enrollments, The Chronicle found that women students outnumbered men in every state. In 13 states, women made up 60% or more of college students. West Virginia, where 50.2% of college students were women, had the lowest percentage difference between men and women students."
Women Continue To Outpace Men In College Enrollment And Graduation
And what do those women become?
"One-third of the Democratic Party consists of college-educated women, a group that is consistently more progressive than most others. The 2024 Democratic Party Platform reflects this shift, catering heavily to college-educated women’s political preferences — whether on climate change and abortion rights or symbolic gestures like land acknowledgements in official meetings."
Share of College-Educated Women in the Democratic Party Has Increased - The Survey Center on American Life
The question is why?
Some day we need to look at the effects of these women in leadership positions (like the woman who recently resigned in disgrace as the president of Harvard University.)
Many years ago I might have, but these days of photoshopping, AI and other editing tools a person would have to be an idiot to reach a conclusion from a picture. In fact a person can no longer rely on what they read, hear or even see unless one sees it live, with their own eyes, and even then I'm not so sure.
The good news is that they finally convicted somebody for doing that in Ohio.
Can they convict someone for blashemy?
nah...just burn them at the stake
... probably not this century, so far. he could be excommunicated if he was catholic, but he's got enough cash to buy his way back in. since he's already an evangelical and xtian nationalist demigod, he could walk on as a pastor anywhere in gooberville and when any scandals popped up, all he has to do is move down the street a block or two ...
I told my editorial assistant what I wanted to say and got the performative, "Tsk! Tsk!". It suggested:
or
But I still like my original the best:
My associate is kicking and screaming, "It just isn’t cleanly “slander” in the strict sense—it’s insinuation via association," but I have it tied up in the closet now.
Hmmm... Now where did I put that ball-gag? Wait! What's that? The whole point of the article is not to draw sweeping conclusions from limited information? He says he gets it? He then pivots from a statistic about women in college to a negative implication about women in leadership? [checks notes] Same move, different target!
I knew I kept you around for something... good um "thing"? errrr "it"?
Good AI! That's it! Good AI! Have some more electron soup.
Toodles!
(No virtual creatures or artificial intelligences were harmed in the production of this comment. All simulacrums were destroyed and these are not the droids that you are looking for.)
Why are women so easily indoctrinated?
I know it isn't all women.
Just the bitter ones.
Just because many women refuse to date sad rightwing conservative incels doesn't make the women bitter. But it sure seems to make the whiny little Christo-fascist conservative misogynists bitter.
Inside the rise of lonely, bitter men and their impact on reproductive freedom – Reckon
I knew I could get you to post more self-revealing commentary.
Heh. The better question is: why are humans so easily influenced?
As of yet, you have failed to show that women are more susceptible than men to indoctrination. You haven’t even defined what this “indoctrination” is or what it looks like. So far, all you’ve done is take a large group of people and assign a negative trait without anything resembling proof.
You do know what that’s called, don’t you?
And that line of thinking isn’t new. It echoes the old habit of treating women as inherently more impressionable or less rational. America has been down that road before. It wasn’t grounded in evidence then, and it isn’t now.
I gave 5 notable examples.
All of which were chosen because they are liberal and you have a deep dislike of them as shown across several years of commentary. You gave assertions that they were somehow less-than desirable, but you did not provide realistic evidence, merely rehashed talking points. I addressed your examples here . I also explained why your commentary is mistaken.
Also, I have addressed your errant post to Perrie just down the page a bit, where I give examples of some very impressive women.
BINGO!
All of which were chosen because, as I carefully explained, they were the first generation of the majority educated women to go out and enter into leadership positions.
Neither you nor those hiding behind you are qualified to answer for Perrie.
... but you're qualified to answer for the maga fuhrer? oh wait, that does make sense ...
I will answer whenever I please and if there is an issue with my commentary then I am more than sure that I will hear about it.
Vic,
I'm not sure how you have never seen her before, since we had an ex-member here who used her face as his avatar.
btw, Your whole comment is off topic. If you want to talk about Ken's other video, do it in your own thread.
That being said, college-educated women are up in all sectors, not just the democratic party and there is still a lag behind men... Also, women are up in the Republican party, and also lag behind men.
That's odd, since what we have been seeing in our political world is a bunch of disgraced men in both parties.
You're kind of making Ken's case. We see what we are looking for.
If that is true, then clearly, I and at least one other member didn't think enough of it to remember it. I do recall a member using the face of the President's daughter, which I once told you was indecent.
btw, Your whole comment is off topic.
With all due respect, while I agreed with you that it was honorable for someone to admit they were wrong about a photo, I think I am well within topic to assert that his being wrong about a photo does not mean that his philosophy is wrong.
That being said, college-educated women are up in all sectors, not just the democratic party and there is still a lag behind men... Also, women are up in the Republican party, and also lag behind men.
I have to disagree. We are witnessing the majority of college graduates, which are women, taking their place in leadership roles in our society. They are not lagging behind men and in some cases, they are being propelled in those positions. You did notice that the 3 Ivy League presidents who testified before a congressional committee on antisemitism on college campuses were all women. I knew somebody who taught at one of those schools and he was vying for that position. He was told flat out to forget it: "We are looking for a woman."
That's odd, since what we have been seeing in our political world is a bunch of disgraced men in both parties
Well Perrie, now is the chance for women to show us what the world would be like with them at the helm. Thus far, Perrie, all I see is a bunch of indoctrinated left-wing women, many of whom were nothing more than DEI hires. Hopefully that will change.
I hope you won't mind me being honest. Transparency remains a great disinfectant.
How trite ... more please. /s
If the goal is to evaluate outcomes, then we should look at outcomes:
And this is not limited to one generation. There are younger leaders as well: Katie Bouman in computational imaging, Parisa Tabriz overseeing one of the most widely used web platforms, Daphne Koller applying machine learning to drug discovery, Corie Barry leading a Fortune 500 company, and Reshma Saujani building a national pipeline into technical fields. The pattern holds.
These are just some of the exceptional women in leadership positions who have produced measurable outcomes tied to real authority and responsibility. These examples do not support the claim that what we are seeing is simply a group of “indoctrinated left-wing women” or “DEI hires.”
I would like to thank my editorial assistant for help in compiling this list of women who are most definitely not DEI hires.
I would love to see that. Something so rare would be a treat.
Nice work, Thomas!
That photo has been passed around here for years. And those that say they would never reach a conclusion based on a picture? I call bullshit. Because those same people use that same photo to cause others to reach the conclusion they already did
That's the original Liberal Karen, isn't it?
I think so. It sure has been posted on here a lot.
Sadly, I think this is the 'icon' of Karens:
Woman screams as Donald Trump is sworn in as President
To Buzz: There are two distinct titles to this video showing above. The second (bottom) title is the one showing on the Youtube channel.
The rest of this thread was removed for stupid taunting. Knock it off. Only warning.
Yes, first impressions of microsecond frames of digital photography has given us screaming Karens, Presidents supposedly staring at their wristwatch at a funeral, sleepy Joe Biden,
sleepy Donald Trump, and who could forget royal friends with benefits?
Then there are blockbusters that aren't photos at all but AI fake nonsense from the mentally ill Dear Leader himself.
Trump healing Jeff Epstein with military angels overhead, jets, eagles and maybe Jeff's victims being healed by "Jesus, I'm a Doctor of Light, Donald J Trump".
Once on the internet, always and forever, on the internet.