Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been accused by some of his fellow parents in the area of being something of a spoilsport. You see, your Maximum Leader steadfastly refuses to sign a permission slip requested by his children’s elementary school that gives permission for his children’s photos to be posted on the school web site, or in a newspaper that might republish the photo on their web site. Basically, your Maximum Leader categorically refuses to give his permission for his children’s photos to be republished on the web (although they can be printed in a yearbook or the school newsletter). This has meant that on one occasion some photos of Villainette #1’s class - a year or two back - were not used to support a newspaper article published about the school. The photos couldn’t be used because Villainette #1 appeared promenently in them. (They eventually used photos of another class.)

Your Maximum Leader just doesn’t want photos of his kids floating around the interwebs right now. There may come a time where his children post photos of themselves out there, but that time is a long time off. People have sometimes asked why he doesn’t want his kids photos on the web.

Well… Ask Allison Stokke why she doesn’t want her photo on the interwebs… There was a lengthy Washington Post piece about Miss Stokke’s photo yesterday. From the article:

In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.

“I just want to find some way to get this all under control,” Stokke told her coach.

Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke’s picture and leered.

The story gets worse from there.

Your Maximum Leader has no fear that his own photos (of which you will find there are blessedly few) will become the object of leering admiration by young horny women. But the thought of something happening to his children like what is happening to this poor girl in California is a bitter thing to contemplate.

So, that is why your Maximum Leader will not give permission for his children’s photos to be posted on the internet, nor does he post his children’s photos on the internet.

Carry on.