Monday, September 4, 2017

I have been inspired by Paul Stevens to write more about the ridiculous woman and boy in the Altgens photo. First, let's take a look at a real situation in which a teenage girl is holding a boy with one arm and waving. 


First, she is NOT holding the boy with her arm. Her arm is just a strap. She is supporting his weight by having him sit on her. He is sitting on her hip bone, that is, her iliac crest, right on the bone. But then, she also has a counterbalance going. She is leaning opposite to him, which creates a situation comparable to two kids sitting on a see-saw in perfect balance.


If one kids weighs more, he or she has to scoot forward to get it to balance. 
It takes a little bit of energy to get airborne but none to sustain it. They could remain perched there for hours- forever- without expending any energy. So, what is holding them up? Their dead weight is holding them up; each is holding up the other, which is to say that gravity is holding them up. And it's the same way here:


In this case, a little bit of his weight is leaning back into her arm, so her arm is doing a little work there, but not a lot. However, it's enough that she couldn't sustain it forever. He would start feeling heavy to her as her muscles fatigued, and she would be compelled to put him down. But, what do we have here?



We have the mother and boy both perfectly vertical, which means there is no counterbalance going on. His body weight is NOT being transferred to her. Presumably, his weight is just resting on her outstretched arm, which means, that her arm alone is supporting it; doing all the work. And look how big that kid is. His head is as big as hers. There is no way she could do that. There is no way she was strong enough to do it. She would have to be Superwoman. The alterers obviously added them to the photo to obscure the man in the Fedora Hat.  

The Altgens photo is the most altered political photo in the history of Mankind, and I suspect that the grotesque Jackson photo of the fake Oswald shooting is a close second. 

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