This Is The Ugliest Picture Of Michael Phelps You Will Ever See

Oh, look, it's Michael Phelps. Seeming extra pasty. Slate nicely followed the trail this week as a set of terribly executed Olympic-athlete stock photos became a meme and a scandal.

Were the photos a mistake, an effort to paint American athletes as flawed, or just a case of bad photography? What say you?

The World's Ugliest Photograph of Michael Phelps [Slate]