My Life on the B-Roll: My Left Hand on The Daily Show?

For a few days, I was certain that my left hand had appeared on The Daily Show – as the hand of a Libyan blogger. I was watching this segment about how women in Libya are leading the uprising, when I noticed that The Daily Show had used this ABC b-roll of a woman blogging:

I put down my bag of chips and shouted, “That’s my hand!” My rings. My keyboard. My hand. I was being used to represent the Libyan uprising on ABC News as reported by “The Daily Show.”

Never mind that Libyans surely do not use a QWERTY keyboard, as my friend Gwen later pointed out. Somebody at ABC must have typed in “women” and “blogger” into their b-roll system and pulled out this old video of me typing. Perhaps my left hand represented mom bloggers worldwide.

Why would I think that’s my hand? Well, my hand has been filmed and or/appeared on a fair number of news and entertainment programs, most recently for Better TV:

Granted, my fingers have since gotten thinner, but the rings match. I had to launch an investigation into what I would come to call, Hand-Gate.

I had indeed appeared on ABC’s World News Now way back in the day (so far back, I can’t find it on the Internet), so ABC could have filmed my left hand. I watched the segment, which I have on DVD, but they never showed my hand typing.

So I dug a little deeper.  

An investigation into old TV segments and my photos from 2005, when ABC had (possibly) filmed my left hand revealed that my keyboard wasn’t black, but white. I have since replaced it and the crumbs inside it. Also, the keyboard on the Daily Show wasn’t ergonomic, like mine have long been. 

That wasn’t my left hand, but an impostor! Not really, but I’ve only ever heard the word “impostor” on Scooby-Doo, and I’ve always wanted to use it in conversation.

Alas, my hand, and in fact, no part of me, has ever appeared on “The Daily Show.” I haven’t even attended a taping of the show, though I came close last fall when my friend Jenna snagged tickets and invited me, but Back-to-School night prevented me from going. (I’d already missed one for a Springsteen concert, so…).

Now to get back to blogging about the Libyan uprising.