May 31, 2013

"14 Photographs That Shatter Your Image of Famous People."

Actually, a couple of these confirm my image. What dictator doesn't have his "I'm a child at heart" photos? In fact, as I look back through this photo set, every single picture seems to reinforce the image I already had.



ADDED: Link changed to Cracked, where this piece originally appeared.

56 comments:

Bob Ellison said...

The first shot of MLK shooting pool is strange. Is he trying to bank the 11 ball into the far corner? That's not gonna happen, and it's not a good shot. I call BS.

Henry said...

It's also not hard to learn to do that shot.

The photo of Kurt Cobain with his daughter doesn't shatter anything. It just makes me sad.

Tank said...

That picture of Clinton reminds me of when he didn't inhale. LOL.

Why didn't he have a cuter GF?

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Last night we watched "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and it shattered my image of Bertram Cooper.

Kind of a cross between Mickey Rooney and Jerry Lewis.

There was no chocolate pudding, either.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I went snowshoeing in the Bavarian Alps this winter, and saw a number of those sleds in use.

The Hitler picture is not odd when you understand that adult men ride them just as much as children.

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Mitchell,
Was he wearing shoes? Quoting Ayn Rand? Boffing Mrs Blankenship?

Leland said...

In that third picture, Hitler looks like a Tea Pot minus the spout: Image Shattered.

Anonymous said...

Gone are the days of shooting pool in a coat and tie, but the MLK photo seems legit to me.

Astro said...

@Leland -- that's the matching sugar bowl.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Wow. Hillary! looks just like Scarlet Johansen.

Icepick said...

I don't know, the Alex Trebeck photo threw me for a loop.

The comment about Kurt Cobain eating a whole pizza seemed kind of dumb. "… it’s still a shock to realize sometimes the man just sat down and ate an entire pizza like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo." Uh, what young man HASN'T sat down and eaten an entire pizza like Shaggy? Seriously, I had to make myself stop and one-and-a-half pizzas when I was younger. And unlike Cobain, I didn't do drugs, either. And incidentally, I was much thinner back then. I was a skinny rail of a kid. These days, weighing a hundred pound more on the same frame, I can only eat half a pizza.

The only other picture that threw me for a loop was the one with Colonel Sanders and Alice Cooper. It doesn't change m perception of the Colonel so much, but Alice? What was he doing? Was he just that much of a fried chicken fiend? Weird....

Icepick said...

Wow. Hillary! looks just like Scarlet Johansen.

lol

rhhardin said...

I thought Austrians were skiiers.

slumber_j said...

MLK should have learned to shoot left-handed: that's how you do that.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Love the one of Hawking and his bride. Up till about 1974 there was a whole sub set of humanity, rocking horn-rimmed glasses, pounding beers, and raising ironic detachment to an art form.

Anonymous said...

hitler rosebud pic

ricpic said...

That Clinton was such a slobola doesn't surprise me. It's his internal life that remains a complete mystery. Is he all con man? Is he a true believer? Does he just love to run his mouth or is he really passionately partisan? Does he see the opposition as the enemy or just the other side in a game of musical chairs? To this day I have no idea, as opposed to the completely readable Hillary, what makes Bill tick.

Anonymous said...

The Stalin pic is heavily airbrushed.
He was terribly pockmarked and a really ugly specimen.

Known Unknown said...

The photo of Kurt Cobain with his daughter doesn't shatter anything. It just makes me sad.

What's amazing is that his daughter has grown up to be a pretty normal, level-headed kid.

dc said...

I think think Stalin was screwed.He didn't make the list of the top ten hottest psychos.

Leland said...

Well, it can be said that Churchill really did have the balls to stand up to the Hilter war machine.

DADvocate said...

None of the pix shatter any images I have/had. I've never thought much about Kurt Cobain and never assumed Stephen Hawking was born in a wheelchair. Einstein was a German. Does anyone think he didn't drink beer?

My images of people I don't know are always kind of fuzzy. I wonder what were they really like.

Tibore said...

Oh, yeah, Cracked.com did this a while ago. Kudos to DailyHarbor for crediting them, but onions as well for doing nothing more than just rerunning it almost exactly like it was at Cracked.

Michael McNeil said...

Alice Cooper these days is weekday evening DJ at KHIP (104.3 MHz) radio station broadcasting across the Monterey Bay area (~100 mi. south of SF) in California.

Darrell said...

I pity the people that would even think that any of the photos are surprising/shocking/revealing.

Kevin said...

Alex Trebek looks like a dead ringer for the teacher on Glee, at least in those photos.

But yeah, no surprises in those pics.

Larry J said...

Both Hitler and Stalin were failed artists. Cause and effect or coincidence?

KCFleming said...

The photo of the Dalai Lama going all MMA on that cute panda bear was a little shocking, but not anything else.

Patrick said...

I pity the people that would even think that any of the photos are surprising/shocking/revealing.

Well, you've got to admit that the Churchill pic is uh, revealing.

KCFleming said...

Although I was a little taken aback by the image of Cassius Clay dressed as Marilyn Monroe.

SteveBrooklineMA said...

The Alex Trebeck one is interesting, The Alice Cooper one is somewhat surprising, but may be just a shot from a green room somewhere. I wonder who's who in the Manson family pic. Other than that, nothing to see here really.

I was especially put off by the Emminem blurb. He liked Alf and had a birthday cake when he was a kid! Wow! What's next... he picked some dandelions for his mom? Mind blowing!

NitneLiun said...

I'm a bit surprised there was no commentary attached to the pic of Al Pacino and Christopher Walken.

BTW, I've met Walken. He's exactly what you think he is.

Robert Cook said...

"Both Hitler and Stalin were failed artists. Cause and effect or coincidence?"

Or, one could say they were successful artists, their magnum opuses being what they made their respective countries into.

Robert Cook said...

What's the surprise about Alice Cooper? He was a midwestern kid who was quite square and wholesome, by his own admission. His father was a lay preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ. He used to go golfing with the likes of George Burns back in the 70s.

Peter said...

Hitler was said to be kind to children and dogs, but that didn't stop him from killing all the dogs before he killed himself (or the Goebbels from killing their children).

which means only that even though dictators shouldn't need to care what anyone thinks about them they nonetheless propagandize endlessly about their supposed virtues.

edutcher said...

Stalin was a failed priest and he tried his hand at poetry. the art is news to me.

That aside, most of the pics are either staged or when they were (much) younger. Think about what you were like when you were 19.

ricpic said...

That Clinton was such a slobola doesn't surprise me. It's his internal life that remains a complete mystery. Is he all con man? Is he a true believer? Does he just love to run his mouth or is he really passionately partisan? Does he see the opposition as the enemy or just the other side in a game of musical chairs? To this day I have no idea, as opposed to the completely readable Hillary, what makes Bill tick.

Sociopath, just like Choomie.

He needed Hillary! to give him the needed drive or he would have stayed the pot-inhaling, coke-snorting Lefty slobola in the pics.

jr565 said...

Hitlers final words:
Die rosenknospe

Colonel Angus said...

I found none of the photos compelling.

edutcher said...

Peter said...

Hitler was said to be kind to children and dogs, but that didn't stop him from killing all the dogs before he killed himself (or the Goebbels from killing their children).

Al tested the cyanide on Blondi, but I don't know of any others.

Magda poisoned her kids because she couldn't bear the thought of them living in a world without their beloved Fuhrer.

I can live with Al (who liked kids, dogs, and big blondes), but Maggie personalizes the real horror of Nazism.

suestew said...

"Both Hitler and Stalin were failed artists"

@LarryJ

Aren't most of us failed artists?

As for the photos, the one of Mr. Rogers was the most shocking. Stalin was hot--but that isn't surprising. All the rest left a refreshing impression (except the Churchill ballsack--I could have died without seeing that).

Chip Ahoy said...

You're right, none are shattering, plus the list is incomplete because it doesn't have vacationing John Wayne in his poncy pool clothes or Phyllis Diller without makeup, wig, high-tension cables etc.

Larry J said...

edutcher said...
Stalin was a failed priest and he tried his hand at poetry. the art is news to me.


Some info here

sakredkow said...

Lassie peeing on a fire hyrdrant.

sakredkow said...

Lassie we know was actually a male.

Ann Althouse said...

"Oh, yeah, Cracked.com did this a while ago. Kudos to DailyHarbor for crediting them, but onions as well for doing nothing more than just rerunning it almost exactly like it was at Cracked."

Yeah, I gathered that this was from Cracked and tried to find it but didn't try that hard. I should change the link.

Tibore said...

It's here professor:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/14-photographs-that-shatter-your-image-famous-people/

Here's to hoping Blogger's spam filter doesn't swallow my comment. :-/

Tibore said...

Oh, my fault. I see that you've now put it in the "Hostile Interviews" thread.

JackOfClubs said...

I'm glad they told the wholesom story behind the Mr. Rogers pic. Cracked can be overly cynical at times and it's a real turn-off, but it's good to see they did the right thing here.

Nathan Alexander said...

"...every single picture seems to reinforce the image I already had."

If the picture of the clearly visible Churchill dong reinforced the image you already had of him, I really have to question what you were taught in history class.

Amartel said...

This is turning into Crackhouse.

Billary-politics ruins everything. They look happy and fun in that old photo.

And speaking of ruining everything,

Hitler-manages to make sledding look evil.

Amartel said...

Hello Winston Churchill. Clearly not anticipating a world wide showing of his private vacation at the shore photos.

Alice Cooper also now owns a restaurant in Arizona and is quite a good golfer. Which is why I'm not at all surprised by the Eminem photo. (See also, Trent Reznor's high school yearbook shot.)

edutcher said...

Ann Althouse said...

What dictator doesn't have his "I'm a child at heart" photos?

FWIW, a lot of Al's photos, like the home movies Eva took, were for private consumption only.

I'm wondering if that was one of them.

rcocean said...

Why didn't Clinton have a better looking girlfriend? Why did bang fat chick Lewinsky?

Why did he dodge the draft? Why did he play for the band instead of the football team? Why did he fill his cabinet with sycophantic males and chicks?

Notice the pattern? In a straight all-male society Clinton wouldn't have been elected to anything.

rcocean said...

The decline of the southern male in four words:

Andrew Jackson - Bill Clinton.

edutcher said...

rcocean said...

Why didn't Clinton have a better looking girlfriend? Why did bang fat chick Lewinsky?

Mommy.

The decline of the southern male in four words:

Andrew Jackson - Bill Clinton.


No, Robert E Lee - James Earl Carter Jr

John henry said...

Winston Churchill was also an artist. Not a bad one IIRC, though I don't think he sold any paintings.

I do need to thank Ann for those pictures, esp of Churchill. There should have been a warning.

I started Vol 3 of Manchester's bio of Churchill. Now every time I read it I think of that picture. Not very happy thoughts, either. More like Ewwwww...

And one last word: "Shrinkage"

John Henry