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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Phelpsbeijing.jpg


Michael Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Olympic (Photo Public commons)

What a fuss over Michael Phelps smoking MJ! One photograph and no chemical residue, the local sherif wants him prosecuted!

Michael Fred Phelps (born June 30, 1985) is an American swimmer. He has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. By the end of 2008, he held seven world records in swimming.
Phelps holds the record for the most gold medals won at a single Olympics with the eight golds he won at the 2008 Olympic Games. With this record, he surpassed American Mark Spitz, who was also a swimmer and had held the previous gold medal total with the seven that he won at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Source.


Donna_Rice_and_Gary_Hart.jpg

Photo of Donna Rice sitting on the knees of Gary Hart on the yacht Monkey Business, the climactic image that ended Hart's second 1988 presidential campaign.

Early years of Donna rice:

The daughter of a highway engineer and secretary, Rice lived in Florida, Georgia (in Atlanta), and South Carolina. A self-described over-achiever, she began a modeling career at age 13 and worked at getting straight A's in high school while attending church and working in clothing stores.
Rice graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1980, where she was both an honors student and cheerleader. Of her senior year, however, she said: "I began to compromise my Christian values — partying and dating guys who weren't Christians."[1]
After graduating college, Rice stopped attending church. She reports being raped by an older man she was dating, but she was too ashamed to tell anyone. She says the rape was "the turning point in my life, the catalyst that propelled me further into an unhealthy lifestyle".[1] After winning the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant, she went to New York City to compete in the national event. She did not win, but remained in New York and pursued an acting and modeling career.
In 1982, Rice moved to Miami, where she worked as a television actress for a pharmaceutical company and for a small marketing business. In March 1987, she met former Senator Gary Hart at a Miami fundraiser.[1]


What are the zealot pictures that most annoyed you ruining folk! ISo we now learn a young man who can swim faster than anyone else in the world is somehow bringing us down by smoking MJ! It's a window on our morality. It's some huge sin to smoke MJ but not to sell or use cigarettes (causes cancer) beer, fried foods (which contain acrylics) or eat hot dogs (nitrites and cholesterol) or dump used batteries in the garbage!

To me, ethics is not what you can do, rather what one should do. So look where we are today. Wherever we go, folk have cell phones, and tiny cameras. Hit a key and that private moment is public fodder. Is it all fair? Is it ethical?

What would you do with such pictures? Would you sell it or just keep it private? Or is this all a good think to make us better?

Asher
 

james sperry

New member
hmmmmmmm,
interesting delima. this is a forum about honesty, correct? okay ........ there are two parts to this issue.

1. if the photo is there, the subject in the photo was doing something that they shouldn't have been doing in the first place.
2. no matter who it is or regardless of what they have done ........ everybody is subject to the same values or laws as anybody else. photographers attempt to convey what they see, if they see the truth .... why not convey the truth and get money out of it in return if it is a government official, holywood star, sports star, legal official, .... anybody high in stature, etc, etc ... ?

i don't know what the issue is with micheal phelps and the mj .... yes, that might be a different issue while mj doesn't really affect anybody but micheal phelps. but ........ if i had photos of bill clinton and monica ....... you bet i would try to make money off of them! ... why? .... photos like that show the truth behind the curtain of crap that we are led to believe. i'm faithful to my wife, i follow laws and military regulations, i'm not perfect with everything that i do but when i mess up, it's not that bad and i'm not in a position that anybody would even care.
now, i'm not the type that would follow anybody just to get a picture of them just to make money off it. but, if i just happened to get a photo out of chance .................
 
I don't smoke the stuff anymore but sometimes I wish I still did. Perhaps if everyone in the world toked every once in awhile we would not be as "messed up" as we seem to be without it. Phelps is young and a universal celebrity and he did something that probably 98% of everyone else, given the same circumstances, would have done too, and some dipsh*t with a camera phone, for whatever reasons, hurt him a lot more than he was hurting anything or anyone himself. Was it jealousy? Envy? Payback for some imaginary wrong he carried around in his sick, little head? Or was it just some nobody trying to make a payday and hit it big at someone else's expense? Do I really care that Phelps hit a bong at a college party? No. I do think the kid that took the photo should get his butt kicked and then, live happily everafter with the money he made from taking it. There should be some kind of penalty involved. But, as long as we the idiots keep buying the rags that this kind of stuff goes in, keep perpetuating the chain emails that round the globe in seconds, we will continue to see more and more of it. People that have absolutely no life of their own and just live to see someone else that does, go down in flames, justifyably or not, will most likely always do so. This means there will most likely always be a place and a demand for these kinds of shots. We need to all pay more attention to what we do otherwise you may find yourself in some similarly stupid and irrelevent situation and something that should for all intents and purposes be a non-issue, might just end up ruining your life. Peace man. Make love, not war.
James Newman
 

Gary Ayala

New member
Being the President of the United States or on the cover of Wheaties (now Weedies) carry similar responsibilities. Both positions the person is considered a "role model".

A person who derives their income from a large marketplace of people must be ready to accept a stricter code of conduct than those that live private lives.

While yes this code is burdensome ... but the benefits of great wealth and power offset this heavy personal burden. Those entering public life must be ready to accept the benefits and the responsibilites of the life they choose.

Gary

PS- Unfortunately, some people are just thrust into the public limelight without choice. The burden of this responsibility, of which they have not prepared, has/may ruin their lives. The Marines (and Corpsman) who were captured raising the American flag on Iwo Jima is one such case. (The most famous photo of WWII - my segway back to photography.)
iwo-jima.jpg
 

james sperry

New member
Being the President of the United States or on the cover of Wheaties (now Weedies) carry similar responsibilities. Both positions the person is considered a "role model".

A person who derives their income from a large marketplace of people must be ready to accept a stricter code of conduct than those that live private lives.

While yes this code is burdensome ... but the benefits of great wealth and power offset this heavy personal burden. Those entering public life must be ready to accept the benefits and the responsibilites of the life they choose.

Gary

PS- Unfortunately, some people are just thrust into the public limelight without choice. The burden of this responsibility, of which they have not prepared, has/may ruin their lives. The Marines (and Corpsman) who were captured raising the American flag on Iwo Jima is one such case. (The most famous photo of WWII - my segway back to photography.)

my comment about the president was more of a generalization of adultary. but my point with phelps and smoking is that this only affects him personally. he's not wasting billions of dollars in unethical scams, or millions of dollars redecorating his office or making a decision that has a devistating affect on the economy or our lives. this is obviously a smearing plot imho. micheal phelps was put in the spotlight for what he had done historically and physically, not for his ethics or personal life. wheaties doesn't care what micheal phelps does, he is only an advertising campaign to them. phelps is not seen as an ambasador to perfection in life. what about the other sports heroes that were on wheaties? do you think they led perfect lives? i seriously doubt it.
but this is honestly a vicious circle of photographers and the PEOPLE THAT PURCHASE these images. if the market is there, it will continue.

now, the people that have led us (the public) to believe they live the life by the law, to the bible and ARE in fact a role model to way we should be living are the people that i was trying to say, should be shown for what they really are.
 

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Inhale

Who said they didn't inhale? What's the big deal? Maybe in the view of the public eye it is but sad to train and reach a pinnacle and have it all thrown away!
 

doug anderson

New member
Who cares about any of this? The country is about to drop into a depression and people are moralizing about a little pot and a little nookie.
 

james sperry

New member
allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllrighty thennnnnnnnnnn .... i'll just strike this one up as a lesson to just keep my mouth shut :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllrighty thennnnnnnnnnn .... i'll just strike this one up as a lesson to just keep my mouth shut :)
James,

You have a right to your opinion. Its' just that we destroy men of high caliber who are exceptional but are flawed. We act as if they are expendable, (as if we ourselves, are perfect) and can stone them to oblivion!

So we dumped a Clinton for a Bush to bring back morality to the White House. Did it work? Really!

If we keep doing that, we'll have no brilliant pilots, engineers, poets, great thinkers or folk who'll risk and step forward to test new ideas where one is not certain. Every single imperfect person is us. We are no better, for sure, we just have not been tempted suffiicently,tested or founded out! Each exceptional person is a link to thousands of jobs for the rest of society. Without them we have a potatoe-famine society.

We now have few of substance willing to run for office. We are that critical!

Now we've chosen a President who's our savior. He's like a rock star! I hope we don't dump him the same way! Our thinking is short-sighted and damaging. Mr. Q Public needs to clean up his act!

Asher
 
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