1000 words

Aside from the protest on the Harbour Bridge this morning, all the news at the moment is about publishing pictures. Or not to publish photos. Or stopping people from publishing photos.

The first set (quite an apt name) of photos is of Pippa Middleton topless with her sister and brother in law from a few years ago. So many issues. Surely these photos have been published before in some manner (why would they have been sat on for so long), so the injunction from the Middleton’s is due only to their recent celebrity status post Royal Wedding. Whilst people are entitled to their privacy, she was obviously aware at the time that she was with a public figure and might be caught in the public glare. The real issue that I find funny is this – she is obviously comfortable enough with her appearance to sunbathe topless, so why is there such hysteria around her body? Half the population has the same bits too, so it’s not like it’s that outrageous. Hopefully this is just a continuation of the Royal Wedding honeymoon, so it will probably dry up soo. On a side note, Pippa is quite attractive, but not off-the-hook like so many people are insinuating too, don’t you think?

Secondly, the photos of Osama. The US will publish them at some point, but doesn’t it just demonstrate the scepticism that we all have now-a-days. The President can come out and say that they got him, and no one will believe him. There is such potential for retaliation that any poor choices could result in bloodshed, so I for one hope that the photos don’t get pushed out purely to satisfy the naysayers.

Thirdly, the photos of Diana. Again published in the past, but why do we need to continue to dive into this macabre event? It’s much the same as Osama – showing corpses in the mainstream press must desensitise so many people to violence and death for little or no reason. Just leave it already!

Pictures are so powerful to illicit these sort of reactions. Given the nature and orientation of these three cases it’s interesting to see how important they are to us now, and the power they have.

This is also a bit of a return to my ‘old-school’ practice of blogging about what I’ve read. I use to do this a lot and thought it a bit naff, and set about trying to write more about what I’m doing. So Ill touch on that briefly.

I’m hungover from seeing Boz, Shanksie and Josh (an old school friend) last night, before kicking on with Laugho to town, where I ran into Si from Uni. All go. Oh to be young, I do feel better than I did early MAINLY because of chilling out. Woop