Don't Scrap With Scrapbookers

I have to admit to being a bit more than a little mystified by the dustup involving Kristina Contes. She seems like a pleasant, witty, creative person with a passion for the avant garde. For her to be placed in the same stocks with Marion Jones seems a bit harsh, and to villify her as "not having a moral bone in her body" goes far beyond rationality. But then, again, I'm not an avid scrapbooker. I mean, I have scrapbooks of my high school and college athletic careers and scrapbooks covering my kids in high school and college, but they're just places to keep information (prior to the internet and blogs): they were never meant to be art or extensions of creativity. Things have changed.
They began changing in 1987 when Rhonda Anderson founded a company called Creative Memories which launched the current scrapbooking craze. Lest you think I jest about the "craze" part, the company has over 90,000 consultants and made around $300 million in 2005. Apparently, this thing is more popular than drive-through liquor stores in Texas. There's at least one website: scrapinstyletv.com, and the industry itself generates about 2.6 billion dollars. There are national contests, global conventions and instructional videos. Who knew? Well, Kristina, for one. She won a contest sponsored by Creating Keepsakes magazine. Her entry featured pictures of her feet and her hairless terrier (?). Her entry caused such a stir that she not only won the contest but was inducted into the Scrapbooker Hall of Fame...again, who knew?
However, when she contacted the contest folks to ask that her friend be included in the documentation for her photos, things went awry in a hurry. It seems that having a friend take pictures as part of ones scrapbooking entry was a no-no of major proportion. I find this odd...after all, I can write a research effort which cites hundreds of sources and be perfectly legitimate. In fact, if I DON'T cite all the sources, I am a plagiarist. So, it seems to me that this was merely an example of someone doing the right thing. Apparently, that's just my opinion. The public outcry was intense, and Ms Contes replied to her critics: "Apparently, many lives have been destroyed by the catastrophe" which led to public castigation by the masses. Comments such as "I guess her response is dignified if you live in the same trailer park that she does" and the aforementioned item about having moral bones filled the internet. She was subsequently dropped from the roll of Hall of Famers as well. Wow! Let's get these people after the Iranians or send them to Pakistan to settle those folks down...or to Kenya. Taking something that's supposed to be fun and turning into a dog-eat-dog competition where only the strong survive just seems a bit much...oh yeah, we still have Little League baseball, I guess.