Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
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.
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