This is nuts. In Duluth, a chorale group performed before and during a board of education meeting. One of the board members took some photos of the group. The choir director says it made some of the students uncomfortable, and he sent emails asking why the member took the photos.
Seriously. It’s a performing group. They’re in the public eye. They’ve never been photographed in action before?
And the board meetings are open to the public and are videotaped by TV stations and audience members. Did they complain about being seen on the evening news?
Choir director: “When it comes to my students, I take safety issues very seriously.” So being photographed by an elected official is a safety concern?
Board member Glass: “I occasionally take pictures of things that catch my fancy. The reality is that the group was part of the audience that gets filmed. It’s part of living in a free society.”
Yes, it really is.
The Reality Tourist 
Good grief…. nuts.
I hear stories like this now almost every day.
Funny. I did NOT sign the permission slip for her choir to use my daughter in advertising because that was too identifying for my (paranoid) fatherly self. But I don’t care if the people in the audience snap away during her solo’s.
So I can see why they had this reaction, but a few synapse firings later the diffo should have been obvious.
-XC
“Education is too important to be left to the educators.”
If that’s not a real quote, it should be.
Hey, it’s all part of getting an ‘education’ degree. It’s the part where they remove the section of the brain that is rational.
The entire education bureaucracy,K-12 to University; seems to be populated with pedophiles and/or control freaks. They commonly want to manipulate children for their own gratification. I suspect few could compete in the real world as adults.
In Great Britain it is against the law to photograph children at a playground, even if they are your own children
Oh dear, what am I to do? I have a photographic memory.
Our culture seems to be of two minds about privacy. A lot of us seem to think that the right of privacy is the inverse of the right to free speech. What they don’t seem to get is that the default is that whatever you do, say or sing in public IS public. You have privacy only when you show by your behavior that you reasonably expect privacy, and even then you might not get it.
The practical rule is that “He’s looking at me!” is for whining children. Get over it!
I lived in Duluth several times during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. By choice. The area around and North of Duluth is lightly populated, so it’s not all that hard to avoid those who’ve settled there and give all sorts of trouble to their neightbors. If you’re not careful though, it’s like living among ‘neightbors from hell’.
I met some citizens of the area who were quite sane ( the large majority). But then there were the others. The woman, out six miles from the airport (civilian airliners, jet fighters of the Air National Guard ( though no longer the F-106s of the USAF noisemakers) Had indicated a fear that some aircraft ot other would fall on her head and her family. She was soon recommended to the Airport’s Air traffic Control Board’, and then appointed. Which shows that you can go along way on just lunacy. She lived just up the road from me. I was, myself, on that Board.
Now I manage with some practice to not become ill just from the displays of mental illness, which sometimes is hard. Like her, I had met all kinds of Duluth persons who seemed to have no ideas about the world outside of their smallish Finnlander paradice. Now, in N. Texas, I find myself in another cage of idiots, cowboys, lunatic drivers, and so much like the N. Minnesota whachos, that I seem to have returned, as in a nightmare, to Duluth, the ignorant crapheads, fuckwits,
and all that. Alas. Gerry
P.S. Anyone knowing about the killing of the Finnlanders who volunteered through the CPUSA for reimmigration lumbering work in Karelia and their slaughter in Russian Gulag in the USSR should contact me at my address.
As they mpw say. “All of your crazy Finns are belong to us”.
I lived in Duluth several times during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. By choice. The area around and North of Duluth is lightly populated, so it’s not all that hard to avoid those who’ve settled there and give all sorts of trouble to their neightbors. If you’re not careful though, it’s like living among ‘neightbors from hell’.
I met some citizens of the area who were quite sane ( the large majority). But then there were the others. The woman, out six miles from the airport (civilian airliners, jet fighters of the Air National Guard ( though no longer the F-106s of the USAF noisemakers) Had indicated a fear that some aircraft ot other would fall on her head and her family. She was soon recommended to the Airport’s Air traffic Control Board’, and then appointed. Which shows that you can go along way on just lunacy. She lived just up the road from me. I was, myself, on that Board.
Now I manage with some practice to not become ill just from the displays of mental illness, which sometimes is hard. Like her, I had met all kinds of Duluth persons who seemed to have no ideas about the world outside of their smallish Finnlander paradise. Now, in N. Texas, I find myself in another cage of idiots, cowboys, lunatic drivers, and so much like the N. Minnesota whackos, that I seem to have returned, as in a nightmare, to Duluth, the ignorant crapheads, fuckwits,
and all that. Alas. Gerry
P.S. Anyone knowing about the killing of the Finnlanders who volunteered through the CPUSA for reimmigration lumbering work in Karelia and their slaughter in Russian Gulag in the USSR should contact me at my address.
As they mpw say. “All of your crazy Finns are belong to us”.
I dont see where there needs to be two pages of commentary here. Simply put, when you (or yours) are out in public you are at the mercy of said public. Hypersensitive people exist, but ultimately they need to accept reality. The rest of us just need to relax.
Of course you’re right, BUT the rest of the public doesn’t want to accept that attitude. Part of that is wanting to control access to themselves (are we photographers stealing their souls?), and another part is the fear that you’re taking that photo for some nefarious purpose. In all these cases, it’s taking that thought of nefariousness to an absurd level that causes the paranoia.
and its getting worse…seems like an outgrowth of a society hell bent on entitlement and no accountability