A Picture worth thousands of words... can end a career pronto

Ralph Northam, governor of Virginia, has insurmountable odds to overcome. An embarrassing photo can kill a career, electrocute the victim in a matter of hours. Just ask Al Franken.

Franken's career ending on a silly photo seems extreme-- and may be a case of new Puritanism causing harm unnecessarily. He acted like he was going to grasp the breasts of a sleeping colleague, a fellow performer, on a USO tour flight.

Northam has a weaker case. He complains that the photos of medical students in black face and Ku Klux Klan outfit is not him. Funny how he didn't think that when first accused. You cannot undo a picture once it has entered the psyche of the citizens. Voters rise from their couches when encountering a horrible visual image.

Somehow Donald Trump has escaped the impact of the new awareness. Call him Teflon Don just like we called John Gotti, the Mafia Don. John Gotti escaped the courtroom conviction every time until he didn't. Sammy the Bull's testimony proved too much. Hard to say if Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen of Roger Stone will ever bring such a result to the President....?

3 Photos That Changed the World

Three other photos since the late Sixties jump to mind. These consciousness-altering photos, non-sexual in nature, have influenced human awareness and political developments and hopefully do so.
Two are from the Vietnam War era and may have influenced our withdrawal from the war. The third is an image none of us can escape...;

1)The photo of a crying Vietnamese child,  Phan Thị Kim Phúc, now called the Napalm girl, as she runs stripped of clothes amid other fleeing villagers, to escape from an air attack. This is one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War. 

2) The summary execution of a handcuffed Vietnamese prisoner by General Ngoc Loan during Tet Offensive in 1968. Another frightening photo

3) The Blue Marble, the first photo of earth taken from space. The photo has changed consciousness, made us aware that national boundaries are of miniscule importance compared to our mutual dependence.

If the earth is to survive we must go back to this third photo--- as our point of reference. We only survive if we share. Share with other people, share with polar bears, share with trees, birds, bees and flowers.

Pollution may happen over here goes over there. Global climate change is exactly that-- global!

A picture of photograph-- may be worth a thousand word, or multi-thousands-- and these words change the world.