Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Joe the Public Figure

When does a person cross the line from being a citizen with the right to privacy to being a public figure with no expectation of the right to privacy?

Our small little microcosm of the world has a few scandals going on with business men. Denny Hecker and Tom Petters.

There are some that say they have no right to privacy because they are the public figures of their respective companies.

But doesn't that beg the question if any one who works in retail as a public figure for a company then has their right to privacy waived?

Or is there a rank? Amount of times on TV? Number of quotes? Words published? Money earned that waives your right to privacy?

2 comments:

Rocketstar said...

I would argue that nobody has a 'right to privacy' unless it pertains to what goes on inside your home. We are all public figures; it's just that 99% of us are too normal and boring for anyone else to care about or be entertained by or have our misery be thier joy.

Humans suck.

Jenn'fer said...

I agree with Rocket on the right to privacy issue. I would also use the "area under the curve is the same as over the curve" argument. In other words, the amount positive attention they pursued in the public domain will be equal to the amount of unwanted attention when they literally cross a line. Like a Sine Wave. In other words, most of us don't seek that attention, so when we cross the line, not many people care. Why do I find math and physics so closely correlated the human behavior?