A 21-year-old man from Muskegon, Michigan, who, like every young person in Michigan, is unable to find work, decided to spend his spare time making a comedy YouTube video. He filmed himself singing regular, kid-geared songs to a group of children and then recut it so it looked like he was singing them a dirty song. So, you know, the kind of stuff people commonly do when they are trying to make funny videos involving children and don’t want to harm them in any way! But a few parents, the cornerstone of news sensationalism and the over-protectedness industry and, apparently, American law, complained. So a prosecutor charged this guy with creating child pornography, because why not? People love reading stories about people being charged with child pornography!
Why stop there? Charge him with arson and money laundering and drug possession too! And, ooooh, murder! Murder is a good one! HE’S GUILTY OF ALL OF THEM, OBVIOUSLY.
Tony Tague, the Muskegon County prosecutor, stands firmly in the first camp: He charged Mr. Emory with manufacturing and distributing child pornography, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and 25 years on the sex offender registry.
Sure! Never mind that no children were naked and/or having sex with one another! Let’s just charge him with this and ruin his life, because we don’t like him. You know, democracy and the rule of law!
“Does 20 years fit the crime? No,” said Dan Peebles, one of the parents. But, he added, “Would I care if he got 20 years? No.”
This is disgusting. It used to be that society didn’t care whether the law was applied fairly to black people. Now people care so little about their fellow citizens that it doesn’t concern them whether or not the law is applied fairly to anyone they don’t actively like. “That kid did something mildly annoying I will forget about in a week? Yeah, give him the death penalty.”
We can finally end this centuries-long struggle to get rid of free speech, because hard-working prosecutors have found the perfect loophole in the First Amendment. Hooray! Let’s charge everyone with child pornography and throw them in jail forever. And hopefully the other people in jail will rape them in the ass! Rape is great. [NYT]
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Sure hope that prosecutor doesn't get a hold of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cds7lSHawAw
KILL HIM!
“Does 20 years fit the crime? No,”
Jail is the new Social Security.
Three hots and a cot… you're set for life
Or 2 rich Kochs
"Two Kochs and a Cot". Sounds like a porno.
Wait, wait, I was just joking! Stop cuffing me! Don't tase me bro!
Except once working stiffs start to feel entitled to lengthy prison terms they'll be slashed by conservatives (not to mention other prisoners!).
That's because prison is SOSHAMALISM! And it's all the fault of those greedy, greedy prisoners. We need to take away the prisoners union's collective bargaining rights to balance the budget. If you want to be sodomized in a dingy little room you should pay for it yourself, instead of foisting it off on the taxpayer. Unless you're a republican senator.
I know I'm slow, but you are saying that when we reach retirement age, we should make an annoying video, get charged with a crime and then let the govermint take care of us in jail for the rest of our worthless lives?
Genius.
Isn't it funny how not providing inmates with adequate medical care is considered "cruel and unusual punishment" by the SCOTUS, but not providing not-yet-jailed citizens with adequate medical care is good conservative values?
That's not funny… AT ALL! How can you say such a thing is funny when it seems like that's what is happening and it isn't fair.
Oh, you mean, like funny ironic not funny ha ha… OK then, yes.
Wait till they catch Pedobear. No more Pic-a-nic baskets for him.
This is Michigan. Recall that until recently one of the deputy State's Attorneys was a fundy guy who was defaming and harassing a gay student at UMich that he'd never met.
This is Michigan. Recall that in 1999 a man was arrested for swearing. Fortunately, he eventually got off, but at great expense to him.
Shit, ask ACORN about selective editing…
Wait, now selectively edited kiddie porn video from ACORN has surfaced? Does Breitbart know about this yet?!?
Kid's lucky he isn't in gitmo. I mean being from michigan he is prolly muslin anyway. So he is lucky he will only get 25 years instead of infinity years. Lucky bastard.
And a union member. Put him away for life!
i've been working in this one-pedobear town the last few months. No wonder I can't find any live music.
This country is getting more and more fucked by the moment.
DBB: Did I read a comment of yours over at News Hounds?
No sire…but thanks for the tip.
Also, "Dan Peebles" sure sounds like a child pornstar name, doesn't it?
that comment just got you 5 to 10
♪♪Makin' Tennessee Plates♫
Is this that Sharia Law I have been hearing about (or was she on last nights Law & Order rerun)?
Sure! Never mind that no children were naked and/or having sex with one another! Let’s just charge him with this and ruin his life…And hopefully the other people in jail will rape them in the ass! Rape is great.
Well played, Jack. Now you've managed to finagle a porn charge against yourself.
Let's see what Mr. Pebbles (oh.. wait til Bam-Bam finds out!) thinks about this:
“Does 20 years fit the crime? No,” said Dan Peebles. But, he added, “Would I care if he got 20 years? No.”
You can prosecute to the fullest extent of the law to "protect" the children…. Michigan is DuH, WINNING!
Should Dan Peebles be assaulted by a drunken bum who overreacted to a disparaging comment by Peebles, maimed and disabled, forced to lose his job due to his disabilities, unable to purchase medical care because the Republicans he voted into office discontinued programs for the jobless and poor? No. Would I care if this happened? No.
Playing tricks with the editing would put the staff of AFV in prison… and really only Bob Saget deserves to be there…
If I have to endure another crotch punch I don't know what I will do. Oh, what is AFV?
god, if editing videos to make it look like a crime occured is a crime, um, where are the indictments for lightfart and o'Kweefe?
Arrest the editors of all the CSIs and Law & Orders!
With parents and local authorities like this shaping their destinies, technically the kids really are fucked.
That's what they get for listening to Mr. Enema and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dog!
That's why they wear them baggy ass pants.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Won't somebody think of the children? And our troops, fightin' for our liberties, and my precious little angel Trig!
Trig's got a purdy mouth…
Well, that certainly puts the kibosh on my home-made video of my nephew as Captain Underpants.
So Westerbone-head Church telling parents of dead soldiers that thier childs life was taken because of this countries tolerance of homosexuality=acceptable and non punishable. Snarky tounge in cheek humor= 20 years in maximum security….
I'm no longer going to post on this web site.
Why not? They have us all slated for life sentences anyway, at this point. Think of it as a lame-duck commenting session before they round us all up for Sheriff Joe!
What the fuck is wrong with Michigan? Cretins, even if he had sung the sexually explicit lyrics to the kids that would not be a crime in any sense whatsoever. And they're equating it with pornography? Every one of you evil authoritarians who think this prosecution is OK, please go fuck yourselves.
Well, I could see him being hit with "contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile" or some such thing if he actually sang the songs to them… but that doesn't change the fact that pinning "child pornography" on this guy is downright awful, stupid, and draconian.
Simply exposing their precious ears to profanity wouldn't rate contributing to deliquency to my way of thinking – that's normally for stuff like buying minors things they aren't allowed to have (booze, liqour, whores (unless, of course, you are a Kennedy)).
Some states/counties do have anti-profanity laws, but those are infractions at worst and highly suspect on First Amendment grounds.
So this sounds like a chump who made a video that probably isn't funny and is probably kind of creepy, but I can't see how any conviction for this could possibly stand in the end, after appeals. Whatever the video is like, it can't be as vile as the Westboro Baptist fuckers, and as SCOTUS correctly decided, they have the right to be that vile.
I'm really trying to understand the child porn charge. In the video, it looks like everyone is fully clothed and he's singing a dirty song, right? So whether it's edited or not, wouldn't that be contributing to the delinquency of a minor/exposing a minor to pornography (or however that's worded)? That's a separate charge from producing child pornography – and even that seems like a stretch.
Not that many people these days seem to have much grasp of the law, or respect for it.
Pornography, by definition, requires an explicit depiction or description of sex. Child pornography requires the parcticipants depicted in the sex act to be minors (not just described as or written as minors). So this doesn't fit at all. This guy's confusing obscenity with pornography and calling it kiddiy porn because a child is near it. But this is also the batshit crazy bible thumping part of the Wolverine state, so go figure.
The closest thing to being able to charge someone for kiddy porn where the kids stay clothed I could think of would be if you had children in the shot with the sex act. Even then most prosecutors would go after you for child endangerment/unfit parenting and indecency violations, rather than kiddy porn, unless the child is, clearly the object of desire or actually participating in the sex act in some way rather than, say, being depicted as sleeping in the room while the adults are trying to have sexytime.
Maybe after he cut it, it appeared as if he was giving explicit description of sex to children?
(Playing devil's advocate here – I think the entire thing is stupid as hell.)
Even reading it to kids shouldn't count unless its something like the Lesson of O or some shit. Even then I don't know how that's kiddy porn instead of some bizarro form of indecency.
That's kind of the point I was trying to make, though. Even if he was singing them a how-to guide, it wouldn't be child pornography. There's some charge here, I forget the exact name, that's basically exposing children to pornography. If the song were graphic enough, it could fall under that, though that would be a stretch. But that's the closest thing I can think of – it CERTAINLY isn't child pornography.
People lacking a sense of humor should not be put in any position of authority.
Tell that to Antonin Scalia.
Jeezus Kriste.
Good to know that Michigan has no other real crime to worry about, though.
Dude lost his job at Applebies, too, thats the real tragedy here.
Applebee's is still in business–now THAT is the real tragedy.
True, but you should have SEEN his flair…
(insert swing line stapler joke here)
He should just say he can't recall whether he made the videos. That strategy worked for Gonzalez when he testified before congress.
Yes, he simply 'misedited.'
Teatards that make their children stand around with signs about how the government is "raping" them and cretins that selectively edit video for gags about child sex trafficking should pray this gets laughed out of the court as it should be.
Whoops! Better go back and un-teach my kids all those sea chanties and bawdy drinking songs I sang to them when they were toddlers.
Best hide that book of Shakespearean sonnets, too. I noticed my 11-year-old pawing her way through that recently.
Whatever you do, get Chaucer out of your library. Sure, the Canterbury tales are a classic of Western literature, but we can't have kids learning about sex, rape, adultery, mooning, or getting pegged with a red hot poker, for God's sake.
"Mischievous Muskegon, Michigan Man Manipulates Media, Makes Masturbation Movie, Many Miffed"
I absolutely adore your awesome alliterative abilities.
It's all to protect your children, America. In a similar idiom, at this moment, I bet Clarence Thomas is working to protect free speech, too, by figuring out how to martyr his old fuck-buddy.
This child pornography story has been brought to you by the letter Oh!
And by the number sixty-n…nah, too easy.
BURN HIM! BURN HIM! BURN HIM!
Can't find the video, but it does not seem like anything that would give your average pervert much of a chub to rub. Back to "Boy Meets World" guys.
Raffi better get himself a good lawyer.
Surely John Ashcroft sang to children. When is someone going to prosecute that crime against humanity?
I remember the days when and young pimp could edit his video any way he wanted. Now these rat fuckers are doing everything they can to keep a natural-born (metaphorical) brother down.
If this idiot DA's version of the law was correct, a shitload of movies would be classified as child pornography; for a start he'd probably arrest the makers of Kick-Ass for having a little girl who uses words like fuck and cunt while she's chopping people into bits.
Or MTV for "Warren the Ape", specifically Ep 103
"Warren takes a group of school kids on an unsanctioned field trip of life that includes back alley drug deals and strippers."
Now admittedly this kid is a douchenozzle, but child porn? Come on.
Or Brazil:
"Holly: Put it on, big boy. I won't look at your willy. "
They should just go ahead and arrest the makers of Kick-Ass, just because. And Nicholas Cage, consider any good will that you had built up from Raising Arizona, gone.
This is child pornography but when Sarah Palin waves her little retarded kid around for photo ops it shows she is just a regular Amerikan mom.
Does Dan Peebles deserve to be ass-raped with a baseball bat? No. Would I care if was ass-raped with a baseball bat? No.
Formula for success in American Politics: Pick the low-hanging "fruit", appeal to the basest instincts of your citizenry, stay away from real solutions to real problems; that can get sticky.
Is this guy an unemployed teacher? Double jeopardy and the chair!!
I'd say this dude executed bad judgment at worst. I was a defensive parent who once asked a photographer for press credentials, so I understand why they could be angry.
But, a) he didn't do the original capture/imagery. b) The Supreme Court has already stated that "fair use" applies to sampling other records, for re-release in new material.
and c) this will not be the last time this happens. Get ready for a torrent of people who will go to
prisonour manufacturing sector, now that the gummint is back in the art criticism business.He's an asshole, for sure, but that's still legal in this country.
At least, it was the last time I checked.
what? corporations have the right to speak freely and no corporations have been harmed here. what's the big fucking deal?
If you wanna protect children against predators, then prosecute pastors, priests, etc, not some smart-ass kid posting a retarded video on YouTube.
I love children. Not in that way,of course. But little tykes playing between my knees, no, I can't say that, uh, little boys on their knees, playing fireman with hoses, no. Damn. Tiny balarinas in tights, no. This is hard. No, not that way. I give up. No more lyrics. 20 years and damn freedom of speechiness. Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts…
Where we always this stupid or is this like something new.
Like pajama jeans.
I don't know quite why we're protecting the children…they're already so fucked.
As a native son, I've said this before and will again: Michigan is the south of the north. Not really related to this issue. I just like pointing it out.
Nice try, New York Times–or should I say FBI crimes-against-children taskforce?–but I'm not falling for it.
DA: "You know what we need to do!?"
Crowd: "What?"
DA: "We need to assemble a crack team of specialists to enforce Civil Code B.237 to ensure our local funding dollars have been spent in a justifiable manner!"
Crowd: ….
DA: "I mean we need to hang the child molesters!"
Crowd: "YEAAAA!"
This is just the next step in prosecutor attention seeking through the pedo meme. Two years ago they were trying it against employed teachers. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/sexting-...
It's almost as if our troops brought back the Stupid Virus from the South when the civil war was over.
Sounds reasonable. Some cancers are caused by viruses. Some obesity is caused by viruses. Viruses are even implicated in furthering evolution, transferring genes between species. Why not the stoopid? It's the Southern Strategy.
Ya'll, if this is alarming, you should be aware that the United States Supreme Court has already upheld the conviction of a man for keeping a diary in which he wrote his sexual fantasies about having sex with children. On paper, for his own consumption, with no publication, internet or otherwise. Because you see, that was a written work which graphically portrayed minors doing sexytime things, and thats child pron.
Gotta give old "velvet coffeebean" sexclub-threesome Thomas some credit for not being a hypocrite, he usually votes in favor of porn rights, anyway.
If I remember correctly, that was because of a probation agreement that was violated by those writings. While one could certainly argue that it was a questionable provision of the agreement (seems that they may have provided a sort of catharsis, although I don't exactly have any degrees related to mental health), it's still not exceptionally fucked up. It's just more generic "burn the world down and start over" background noise.
What's scarier than a Police State? A Fundamentalist Retard state.
Should Dan Peebles be struck by lightning? No. Would I care if he were? No.
This has been going on right under our noses for years!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/i-eat-kids-other...
Kids didn't even hear the song. Geez, good thing Peter Graves isn't alive, or they would have to arrest him for molesting that kid in "Airplane."
This means Seth McFarlane can be arrested because Peter Griffin sang the song "Buttsecks" to Chris Griffin and company.
Given such a flagrant prosecutorial abuse of a basic civil liberty, we can all rest certain that the libertarian Koch brothers will fight this with all of the money and power at their disposal. Right?
Nobody let this D.A. know about "Wonder Showzen".
Children must be protected from this sort of evil. But not given any government aid for medical care, proper education, etc.
The 'kids' he was virtually anal raping with his edited song were really bored high schoolers.
Next, the RIAA will contact everyone that saw this video and demand a nickel.
Maybe this is a stupid question…but here goes. When are WE, going to stop allowing the so-called Christian agenda being shoved down our throats?
My gag reflex just kick in.
Have we, at long last, no clue?
"Every one's a suspect/ and everything's a crime/ But if you stay in lockstep/ Everything will be just fine…"
—Looking Out For You
Good points, all. Saw the House episode. Always loved Hugh Laurie since his days with Stephen Fry. If you've never seen their old sketch show, search their names on youtube.
Laurie is such a funny guy in so many other things that sometimes his House persona is hard to buy. Last night's episode with multiple dream sequences and at one point him in top coat and tails totally showed off that side of him.
Might've been a good showcase for Laurie, but I saw it as the death knell for the show, a true jump-the-shark episode.
Meanwhile if Cheney had been caught throat-fucking a nine-year old, her entire fourth grade class would have been required to send hand produced valentines. What's the fun in having power if you can't use it to sew misery and destruction?
Her?
Wait, so if this guy is getting arrested for child porn, what is the charge for this kid's parents?
Mario van Peebles, how far you have fallen.
Muskegon County, minus Muskegon – which is actually quite a culturally diverse city on the lake -, sits in what is basically one of the most religious parts of the Great Lakes, populated by a bunch of provincial, introverted, and cold Dutchmen. This doesn't at all surprise me. The "Dutch Mafia" basically runs West Michigan.
Well when a child is at risk, or a child may be at risk, or someone who knows a child may be at risk of getting pissed off, then that person may be at risk of putting the child at risk.
Throw the book at him you suburban morons!
…. for The Children's sake.
20 years for a stupid prank, what does W get?
Gotcha. Thanks.
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