I feel obliged to state from the outset that I couldn’t care less what consenting adults do, so long as it poses no harm to others. This is why I’m on record calling for the legalization of drugs and prostitution.
That said:
Tiger Woods has threatened to sue a celebrity smut site and the as-yet-unidentified person who stole and leaked nude photos of ex-girlfriend Lindsey Vonn and a full-frontal image of the pro golfer.
Looks as if that threat is not yet getting the job done.
As of 9:30 a.m. PDT Tuesday, photos and a video of Vonn, the photo of Woods and dozens of shots of additional victims — Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart, Katharine McPhee and Stella Maxwell — remained live on a website that was cited by TMZ in its Monday report of the breach and the legal threat.
(Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2017)
Silly me, I thought the bonding feature of Tiger and Lindsey’s relationship was sharing tips for competition, not pics for titillation. But this sharing of cheap thrills just provides further insight into why their relationship couldn’t last. I commented on their split in “Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn Call It Quits? Duh,” May 6, 2015.
But frankly, I no longer have any sympathy for celebrities who are still falling victim to prurient hacking. We’ve all had fair notice of the risks inherent in taking and sharing nude photos. More to the point, here is how I vented indignation in this context years ago in “Nudes of Celebrities, Including J-Law and Kate Upton, Hacked. No Sh!+,” September 1, 2014.
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What is most noteworthy about this story is that such nudes even exist. You’d think that — after the truly shocking publication of hacked nudes of Vanessa Hudgens years ago — other celebrities would not give hackers the opportunity to do to them what they did to her. Not to mention all of the instructive reports/warnings about hacking that have been published almost daily since then.
Yet reports indicate that, these days, all young celebrities take compromising nudes, which they store on their iPhones or leave floating around in cyberspace (in the ‘iViolated’ iCloud). One could be forgiven the impression they think what happened to Vanessa is something devoutly to be wished.
Any celebrity expressing outrage at being ‘violated’ in this way is either too stupid or reckless to be worthy of any sympathy.
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This is why nude-sharing celebrities who cry foul over being hacked are only slightly less disingenuous than social-media fiends who cry foul over being trolled (Exhibit A: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Instagramming, ‘Marie-Antoinette’ wife.) And their misguided outrage is only made contemptible when they threaten frivolous lawsuits.
Never mind that it’s patently pointless to take legal action to get a website to take down nude photos. For this is rather like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, or like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. Choose your idiom. The cat’s out of the bag.
Incidentally, I say “no longer” because here is the more sympathetic view I shared six years ago in “Hacking Nude Photos of Celebrities,” September 16, 2011.
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I see nothing wrong with even ‘good girls,’ like Vanessa Hudgens and Scarlett Johansson, taking nude selfies to share electronically with their lucky boyfriends. I distinguish them from ‘bad girls,’ like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, who do the same (and a lot more), and then arrange for them to be ‘hacked’ for purely commercial purposes.
The paparazzo who hacked nude photos from ScarJo’s phone and sold them to a celebrity website should be prosecuted. … We all have a reasonable expectation that strangers will not be tapping our phone conversations. That same expectation obtains with respect to hacking pictures from our phones.
Not to put too fine a point on it, even though a prostitute sells her body, she has every right to object to being raped. Likewise, even though an actress appears nude in films, she has every right to object to her nude photos being hacked.
That said, I looked at the hacked photos at issue … for purely editorial purposes. ScarJo looks more like a Botticelli muse than a Playboy playmate in all of them.
Therefore, instead of demanding an FBI investigation, she would’ve been well-advised to let these sleeping dogs lie.
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Yes, I looked at the hacked photos at issue here too. With respect to Lindsey, no comment.
With respect to Tiger, reports are that his recent poor play and DUI arrest had him feeling small. But it appears he has always had an anatomical reason for feeling so.
Apropos of which, I should note that I only publish hacked information that serves a compelling public interest. Nude photos of celebrities clearly do not qualify.
But hacked e-mails showing scientists raising doubts about data related to climate change or exposing public officials with secret offshore bank accounts do, hence “Climate-Gate” E-mails Expose Scientific Doubt about Climate Change,” December 4, 2009, and “Leaked ‘Panama Papers’ Affirm more than Reveal OffShore Banking Secrets,” April 6, 2016, respectively.
Related commentaries:
Prostitution a victimless crime…
DC Madam lays down…
Tiger and Lindsey split…
J-Law and Kate Upton…
Tiger DUI…
Hacking nude photos…
Climate-gate…
Panama papers…