There's nothing wrong with the AP photo of Romney bending over

On the front page Jon Seidl has a post about a mildly funny photo the AP snapped of Mitt Romney yesterday. It caught the attention of reporters and bloggers around the Internet because it looks like a little girl is starring at Romney's butt as he bends over.

Accompanying Seidl's post is a poll in which he asks readers whether the AP should have posted the photo. The answer "No, it seems like a ploy to make him look bad" is winning with 90 percent of the vote.

I asked Seidl if he would take a stand on one side or the other. He said the photo of Romney struck him as "odd."

"In our business, everything is scrutinized as it's our job to find the details everyone else is missing," he said. "So it's hard for me to believe that not one person at AP looked at that photo and thought, 'Now that's odd.' The question then becomes, what was the intention of publishing. Was it to intentionally make Romney look aloof, or did they just find it more funny and innocent? If the former, that's bad. If the latter, we now know they were grossly mistaken."

Two thoughts:

1. Those people who said the AP shouldn't have published the photo are never again allowed to participate in our popular "Caption that photo!" contests on Fridays. (Honor system, people.) Photos selected for that feature are always taken at awkward moments, never in context and usually come from the AP wire.

2. If we're not allowed to look at funny photos and laugh at them, we would have never had this one from 2009 below. You'll recall it was published on the Drudge Report and conservatives lapped it up like a nice soup.