Not even sure how to start here. If you haven’t read the Saturday National Zero story “Schools cancel photo day over vendor’s Epstein ‘connection’” and/or the Associated Press story it was sourced from the you may not fully appreciate the Tuesday story from WDKY in Lexington, Kentucky headlined “Laurel County parents speak out over Lifetouch concerns, spring photos canceled.”

Or maybe this is enough to get the gist: Lifetouch has been in the school portrait business since the 1930s, it was bought up by online photo hub Shutterfly in 2017, in turn Shutterfly was bought up by hedge fund Apollo Capital Management in 2019. Apollo’s co-founder Leon Black, who quit under pressure in 2021, was REAL tight with Jeffrey Epstein and that’s enough for some parents to act on vague fears that a sex trafficking cabal will have unfettered access to their kids’ names and photos by demanding that principals and administrators cancel photo day despite Lifetouch’s protestations.

Indeed the AP’s story itself was not particularly credulous toward the parents’ um, concerns which makes the lede to WDKY’s story that much friggin funnier: “Parents in Laurel County are speaking out after new concerns surfaced about Lifetouch, a company that photographs millions of students across the country. The concerns stem from a recent Associated Press report that said some school districts nationwide are cutting ties with Lifetouch after social media posts linked the company to Leon Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, which purchased Lifetouch’s parent company,” emphasis added on the part where the local station acts like the AP exposed some direct Lifetouch-to-Ghislaine Maxwell pipeline rather than simply reporting the perception was causing serious problems for the company and quoting from their statements denying any malfeasance.

“It felt like a small victory for parents in this community who want to protect their children. I’m just hoping we can sit down and talk about choosing a different provider,” said local mom Sydney Privett, who launched the successful petition drive to get the district to drop Lifetouch for photo day.

They are so fucked. They need to spin themselves off and change their name, ASAP.