[FreedomCalls]

The photographer, Jim Wilson, has already explained it:

If you look carefully at the frame, you will see a slightly wide band of dark area that runs from the head of a marine with dark hair in the back row up to the singer. Look carefully at the wall from that marine’s head up to the top of the frame and you will see the blurred cable that was in motion because the dancer was moving it as she spoke to the marines. The full cable is in the shot but is blurred. The reason it isn’t sharp is because the frame was shot at 1/6 of a second in a room that was dark. The flash filled in the frame but wasn’t the main light, the room light provided the main light for the frame. The long exposure balanced the light from the strobe on my camera with the ambient light in the room. The cable was moving as was the singer and the marines. If you look carefully at the frame, you’ll see that nothing in the frame is tack/crisp sharp. I looked in the paper that I got out here and know that the reproduction left the wire virtually invisible.

One-sixth of a second! That is why the cord is blurred.

[DBrow]

Thanks for the link.

I'd guessed 1/30 sec, which would be enough to blur a close object, but 1/6 is very long.

If you read through my post, I go along with the crowd for fun, then arrive at basically the same analysis as the photographer.

It's fun to assume the worst of the NYTimes, and it should be revealing to their top staff that they have a serious PR problem if even a simple photo can generate so much distrust.

And, by the way, a phenomenal set of legs does help move the story.