Oh absolutely. You pull crap like this, you deserve every bit of the shaming coming your way.
Though I remain astounded that the photographer thought this would be OK - or that more of the parents - many of whom were undoubtedly snapping the same pictures on their mobiles (at least, that’s what I’d expect would be happening if this was over here) didn’t react strongly enough to this to stop it.
Well, astounded may be the wrong word. Saddened, more likely.
Yeah, I didn’t buy it when Ingraham did it, I don’t buy it now.
There is a certain kind of ‘waving to your fans’ that can get closer to it, but it’s not something people in a prom photo would be doing.
I’m sure a perfectly valid explanation is all of them just straightened their elbows to copy Hillary and then said they got the black kid to do it just… because. OR the better explanation is to have people stop excusing their behavior, the behavior of their parents and admit that there are more than a couple bad apples in that group and treat them accordingly. Let’s not forget the one kid who did not even feel comfortable to raise his hand, at all.
I’m not excusing anything, just speculating on the possible cases where a person might accidentally appear to ‘sieg heil.’ I mean, who doesn’t like speculating on the possible cases where a person might accidentally appear to ‘sieg heil’?
…maybe it’s just me.
Well HIllary’s doesn’t even look like asolute. It’s not even in the right direction. You might be able to suggest accident if one person did but it’s an entire group of them plus the context of what was said during and after solidifies this is not some misunderstanding or accident. There is a kid standing stiffly right next to his peers who knows exactly what is going on, and he told us all about when it came up. A parent objected during the process, and then a few of them bragged latter. Most people do not wave like that, even if they do the flap hand wave.
If you must know, I went off on the Hillary tangent because Shiva mentioned that Laura Ingraham shot and it occurred to me that she might actually just be doing the ‘wave to fans’ thing. Theoretically. Possibly. As I noted, the argument breaks down when you have a bunch of people all doing it at the same time and in the same direction for a prom photo.
Herr Ingraham started with a Nazi salute, then changed it into a wave…she was totally trolling like the smug moron she is.
Please, Fraulein Ingraham.
That’s no lady.
I actually had a tiny TV crush on her when she had her MSNBC show back in '99 or so.
Yeah, I’m over it.
She’s a space station!
My first experience with her was actually reading Al Franklin’s book, Rush Limbaugh is a big Fat Idiot. So, I never even new who she was until I moved to the US for school.
The book was a hand me down from my older brothers.
That’s my wife?
I would ask you to look again at the photo more closely and there are clearly kids just waving in there.
I recently had professional wedding photos done, and they just bark poses at you, and you do them, and adjust, twist, smile, look up down, etc because you are paying them for the time, and they want to get as many shots in as they can.
This is a poorly posed photo, where some kids caught on that what they were doing looked like a salute and they played into it.
Also, in terms of that circle thing, I think it is probably 50/50 doing a rude gesture for the lulz or doing the circle game gesture (a game in which I played in high school, where you form a circle with your hand below your waist, and if you can get your friends to look at it, you get to punch them.)
I mean of course this could be some secret Nazi cabal of youths laughingly throwing up the sieg heil in the decidedly liberal Sauk County school district, but of all of the possibilities I think that is probably on the low end of plausible.
Have you fully made your transition to a pretzel yet or are you still in the process of contorting yourself into the last few knots?
Look man, there are real Nazis to panic about rather than what a bunch of stupid kids did in a rich suburb. It was an idiotic photo, not a Hitler rally.
What do you think Hitler rallies were like, anyway? For a lot of the young people who went to them, it was just another social event. They just went with along with what the cool kids and the authorities wanted them to do to have a good time and fit in. Which is how authoritarian ideas become ingrained.
I know this because my high school German teacher was a member of the Bund Deutscher Madel, the female version of Hitler Youth; she said they viewed it at the time as like joining the Girl Scouts.
Because Germany lost the war, she ended up as a war bride who emigrated to America (and, as it turned out, became a socialist.) But she made it very clear to us that if not for the war she probably would have been an ardent Nazi, because, she warned us, young people will swallow anything to fit into the group unless they make an effort to think for themselves.
When I saw that picture I immediately thought of her.
Just in case it didn’t come across, my comment was lighthearted and not intended to be mean. It was meant to be some light teasing. :)
I do think Occam’s Razor applies here. I mean, sure, they could have been caught in some awkward mid-pose wave or something, but those aren’t the photos that get published/used. And sure, maybe they’re doing some game where they’re trying to get their friends to look so they can punch them during a photo shoot at a time when literally everyone is looking at the camera, not at them. And while playing that game it just coincidentally happens to be the white power sign they make. While they’re accidentally doing a sieg heil.
Alternatively, they’re punk kids throwing a white power sign and a Nazi salute.
I didn’t really even know there was a white power sign. It’s the OK sign you make with finger and thumb? I have used that at times to mean “OK.” I guess I can’t use it anymore. Damn Nazis.
