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Oh, Won't Anyone Think of The Imaginary Children!

Feb 17, 2011
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Law, Politics & Current Events

Like we've said before, "oh, think of the children" is a magic phrase around these parts. Uttering it excuses you, in our culture, from the surly bounds of logic and proportion.

Case in point: Radley Balko offers the story of Evan Daniel Emory of Michigan, who fancies himself a humorist. Emory videotaped himself singing a harmless song to schoolchildren. Then he doctored the video to make it appear that he was singing a profane song to children, and put it on the internet. As the preview to the video itself makes clear, no actual children were exposed to naughty words in the classroom.

But what does that matter? Just as it was once treason to imagine the death of the king, it's a terrible crime in our society to put children together with profanity or violence or sex, even only in our imaginations. So Emory, thanks to Muskegon County Prosecutor Tony Tague, is charged with a felony.

Tague said Michigan law 'provides penalty' for those who actually manufacture child sexual abusive material "but also has a provision for those who make it appear that the children were actually abused."

Perhaps the children have some sort of civil cause of action against Tague for depicting them in a false light (as enjoying an obscene performance) or for misuse of their right of publicity. What's an eight-year-old's right of publicity worth? Tague ought not use unsuspecting schoolchildren as set dressing in his productions, and I don't care who set the example for him.

But charging him with a felony premised on the idea that he made it appear that children were abused? That suggests a frankly demented society. Movies are full of scary-ass kids — the Children of the Corn, that head-spinning puking chick in The Exorcist, and the entire oeuvre of MacCaulay Culkin. But if perfectly normal kids can drive adults into frenzies of witch-burning barbarism just by existing, then we really don't need horror-movie tropes to make kids scary, do we?

Last 5 posts by Ken

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11 Comments

  1. Chris Berez  •  Feb 17, 2011 @2:28 pm

    Nobody tell Tony Tague about this…

  2. PEBKAC  •  Feb 17, 2011 @4:39 pm

    I've been saying this was going to start happening if precedents regarding certain content from Japan continued as they have for a while now…and been called a paranoid nutbar every time I say it.

  3. nitroglycol  •  Feb 17, 2011 @4:48 pm

    A few years ago some friends of mine, who have a band, were performing this song when a friend of theirs walked into the venue with her two very young cousins (maybe around 10 years old) in tow. The band, as well as several of us in the audience, were taken aback by this, but she simply said "It's ok, they've already seen Borat. At the time I thought "if this were Alabama everyone involved would go to jail"; it seems that that could have happened even just across Lake Huron.

  4. mirriam  •  Feb 17, 2011 @9:44 pm

    There are many days in a row where I simply have no words. This week has contained many of those days.

  5. Scott Jacobs  •  Feb 17, 2011 @10:49 pm

    As a libertarian who never-the-less believes in the rule of law, I generally eschew the act of jury nullification…

    In this case, I am willing to make an exception.

  6. Fnord  •  Feb 18, 2011 @3:27 am

    @Scott: Is it really jury nullification is the defendant hasn't actually broken the law?

    Leaving aside 1st amendment issues, it's not exactly clear the law itself forbids this kind of thing.

  7. C. S. P. Schofield  •  Feb 19, 2011 @8:02 am

    I have to say that, while I think charging this idiot with a felony is over the top, I have to wonder what the #$%^$# he was thinking. OK, yes, "challenging societal norms" has been a (mostly witless) goal of self-styled Artists for a long time, but I thought that even the most deranged social activists knew that is you involve people's kids without their knowledge and permission you are just ASKING for trouble. It doesn't matter what would be reasonable; this is hardwired. If you APPEAR to put somebody's kids at risk, they are programmed by evolution to pound you into paste. And if the 'threat' turns out to be a 'joke', then they have all that adrenaline washing through their systems AND you've embarrassed them. NOT a good combination.

    He should have just played on the freeway; it would have hurt less.

  8. SPQR  •  Feb 19, 2011 @10:32 am

    I can think of other, better legal remedies than a criminal felony charge.

  9. Silver Fang  •  Feb 21, 2011 @9:32 am

    Does this douche bag prosecutor have an email address where we could leave him our opinion of his decision to prosecute Emory?

  10. Doug  •  Feb 21, 2011 @11:13 pm

    I, for a few years, practice in that county. He and his seemly constant revolving door of assistant prosecutors, loved to do this sort of thing from time to time. His nickname is "TV Tony". That should give you a tip as to the kind of man he is.

  11. Saladin  •  Feb 24, 2011 @4:38 pm

    Won't someone PLEASE think of the children?
    http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/2011/02/video-of-tsa-pat-down-after-mother-and.html

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