WARNING LIGHTS ARE FLASHING DOWN AT QUALITY CONTROL: Reese Witherspoon Appears to Have 3 Legs on the New Vanity Fair Cover, and We Have Questions:

And to make matters even weirder, there’s a behind-the-scenes shot in Vanity Fair‘s article in which Oprah has three hands! Is this some sort of conspiracy? Can someone please explain these disrespectful Photoshop disasters?

There’s always the conspiracy that Vanity Fair did it deliberately to generate buzz, but given the fallout of having to deal with the massive egos of the stars on the cover and their reps, it’s more likely that in the rush to meet the deadline, the cover simply wasn’t proofed carefully by those vaunted layers and layers of fact checkers and editors. As Hanlon’s razor posits, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

And the “disrespectful” is a nice millennial touch.

(Classical reference in headline.)