Man charged with child porn for not singing crude song to first-graders

Evan Emory [source]

I first heard of this story a few days ago, but due to either lack of time or interest, I neglected to blog about it. But now, I’ve just read about the latest developments in the case of the man who published a fake video purporting to show him singing a sexually graphic song to a classroom of first-graders, so consider me interested … and pissed.

Firstly, the “offense”:

Mr. [Evan] Emory, 21, an aspiring singer and songwriter, became a household name here last month when he edited a video to make it appear that elementary school children in a local classroom were listening to him sing a song with graphic sexual lyrics. He then showed the video in a nightclub and posted it on YouTube.

[…]

Mr. Emory, who had gotten permission to sing songs like “Lunchlady Land” for the first graders, waited until the students left for the day and then recorded new, sexually explicit lyrics, miming gestures to accompany them. He then edited the video to make it seem as if the children were listening to the sexual lyrics and making faces in response.

So, let’s see: We have a guy who reportedly sang a perfectly inoffensive song to a bunch of kids in a video that he later edited – with the kids completely out of the picture and therefore unaffected in any way – by adding in crude lyrics. He then published this edited video online as an obvious prank, with (as mentioned the article) a disclaimer noting that no children had actually been exposed to those crude lyrics.

Now, admittedly, there are a couple of issues playing against Emory, here. One could make the argument that it’s in bad taste that he left the kids’ faces readily recognizable in the finished video, though I would say that this is a bit of a pointless quibble, considering that none of the students are personally identified or singled out in the video. Others can also say that the prank, itself, was just in poor taste, and while I would agree to a point (it comes across as a desperate and rather lame stunt), I would also say that this is also no real good argument to make against it. People make stupid jokes all the time, and many of them include kids possibly being exposed to “inappropriate” material (though show me a schoolchild who hasn’t been acquainted with crude rap music and I’ll show you a liar). This is no reason to argue against making them; as long as no-one’s actually being harmed, then to each their own.

So, now that we’ve established that the kids in the offending video never even heard the bad, bad lyrics and that the whole thing was just meant as a harmless (if lame) joke, I’m sure that people, even those upset at their kids being depicted in the video, generally reacted in a rational, proportional manner … right?

Tony Tague [source]

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.

“It is a serious, a huge violation,” said Charles Willick, whose 6-year-old daughter was one of the students, all readily identifiable, in the video. “He crossed the line when he used children.”

… Or they could react like complete overzealous morons. As they sadly so often do.

There are plenty of people arguing both in defense of Emory and in favor of locking him up. But the end point is thus: A guy who did absolutely nothing wrong and who broke absolutely no laws is now facing a terrifying reality of spending decades in jail, followed by many more years on a list alongside actual sexual criminals, and a crushing social stigma that will effectively destroy any chance of him ever having a normal life. All because he made one jokey video in which no children were ever actually exposed to sexually charged lyrics – something that the vast majority of them must be hearing every single day of their lives, anyway. (Seriously, this xkcd strip just couldn’t be more true, especially in cases like this.)

Yay for gormless reactionaries running a broken system that chews up innocents for breakfast.

(via @godlesswoman)